H a v i n ga B a l lThe Folk-Dance Tradition Continues

ON THE COVER: THE 32ND ANNUAL ENGLISH-SCOTTISH BALL IS THE HIGHLIGHT

OF THE FOLK-DANCE SEASON AT SWARTHMORE. FOR MORE ON THIS CONTINUING

TRADITION, SEE PAGE 14. PHOTOGRAPH BY ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS.

CONTENTS: A CARPET OF DAFFODILS SPREADS ACROSS MAGILL WALK IN EARLY

SPRING. PHOTOGRAPH BY ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS.

F e a t u r e sS t e p p i n g a n dS h i f t i n g 1 4Folk dance at Swarthmorefinds a new home.By El izabeth Redden ’05

F r a n k A y d e l o t t e :A r c h i t e c t o fD i s t i n c t i o n 2 0A look at Swarthmore’sdefining presidentBy Dan West

I D o S o l e m n l yS w e a r 2 6Christopher Van Hollen Jr. ’83—one of two Democrats to unseat a House Republican inNovember’s election—hashis work cut out for him.By Jason Zenger le ’96

E s s e n t i a lS w a r t h m o r e 2 8The lives of six youngSwarthmoreans tell the taleof a great college. By Rick Bader

L e a r n i n gf o r L i f e 3 4Innovative student-staffpartnerships exchange knowledge,experience, and friendship. By Andrea Hammer

DepartmentsL e t t e r s 3Alumni input

C o l l e c t i o n 4News on campus

A l u m n i D i g e s t 4 0Gatherings and future events

C l a s s N o t e s 4 2Latest correspondence

D e a t h s 4 9Heartfelt condolences

I n M y L i f e 5 2Accidental Discovery of JoyBy Herbert Locks ley ’43

Books & Arts 66Creative works

Our Back Pages 80Come TogetherBy Jeff rey Lott

P r o f i l e sA t H o m e W i t hH e r H e r b s 4 4For Gertrude Bowers Burdsall ’28,her garden is the most peaceful place.By El izabeth Redden ’05

C o u r t r o o m T h e a t r i c s 6 2Rick Appel ’62 teachesthe art of persuasion.By Angela Doody

A P a s s i o nf o r P l a y 7 0Aaron Weissblum ’86 makesa living from inventing games.By Carol Brévart -Demm

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K Among people who work with college and university alumni, there’s a saying about

how alumni view change at their institutions: “Anything before their era is

quaint—anything after is heresy.” Of course, Swarthmore alumni know better.

They know that the College’s history is the story of change. By studying the past, we are

able not only to understand these events but also learn more about how to approach con-

temporary challenges.

I’m known around the office as a Swarthmore history buff. When I applied for this job

13 years ago, I knew nothing of the College—in fact, I had to consult a map to get to my

first interview. But the very first task I completed after being hired was to read Richard

Walton’s Informal History of Swarthmore College (Swarthmore College, 1986) and a lovely

little book of College lore called Swarthmore Remembered (Swarthmore College, 1964). I’ve

been delving into College history ever

since. One of the first editorial changes I

made in the Bulletin was to add a regular

history and nostalgia department, “Back

Pages,” and we have done regular feature

articles on various aspects of College history.

Vice President Dan West shares my

passion for the past. Since he arrived at

the College in 1999, we have had many

conversations about Swarthmore’s history

and how, from its Quaker founders to

today’s leaders, key people and decisions

have shaped the character of the College.

Last summer, we both read Frances Blan-

shard’s Frank Aydelotte of Swarthmore

(Wesleyan University Press, 1970), a biog-

raphy of President Frank Aydelotte. Dan

suggested that the Bulletin publish an article about the man he calls “Swarthmore’s defin-

ing president”; not wasting a moment, I suggested that he write it. The result (“Frank

Aydelotte: Architect of Distinction,” p. 20) is a fascinating look at how Swarthmore

became the academic powerhouse it is today.

Dan’s article is not the only bit of history in this issue. Folk dancing at Swarthmore

(“Stepping and Shifting,” p. 14) has its roots in the 1940s—a long tradition that contin-

ues to enrich the lives of students and alumni. And today’s activist Alumni Council

(“Come Together,” p. 80) also dates to the first half of the 20th century.

There are a surprising number of books about this small college—a testament to its

rich history and powerful impact on American education. (A brief bibliography is offered

with Dan West’s article at www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/mar03/aydelotte.) Three more

books of interest to Swarthmoreans are soon to be published. A scholarly biography of

President Courtney Smith (1953–1969) by Donna and Darwin Stapleton ’69 is in prepa-

ration at the University of Delaware Press. The 75th anniversary of the Scott Arboretum

will be celebrated by a pictorial history to be published later this year. And a new book of

essays called The Meaning of Swarthmore is in its early editorial stages. For history buffs like

me, it’s going to be a good year.

—Jeffrey Lott2

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SwarthmoreC O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

Editor: Jeffrey Lott

Managing Editor: Andrea Hammer

Class Notes Editor: Carol Brévart-Demm

Assistant Editor: Angela Doody

Staff Writer: Alisa Giardinelli

Desktop Publishing: Audree Penner

Art Director: Suzanne DeMott Gaadt,Gaadt Perspectives LLC

Administrative Assistant:Janice Merrill-Rossi

Intern: Elizabeth Redden ’05

Editor Emerita:Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49

Contacting Swarthmore College

College Operator: (610) 328-8000www.swarthmore.edu

Admissions: (610) 328-8300admissions@swarthmore.edu

Alumni Relations: (610) 328-8402alumni@swarthmore.edu

Publications: (610) 328-8568bulletin@swarthmore.edu

Registrar: (610) 328-8297registrar@swarthmore.edu

World Wide Webwww.swarthmore.edu

Changes of Address

Send address label alongwith new address to:

Alumni Records OfficeSwarthmore College500 College AvenueSwarthmore PA 19081-1390

Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or e-mail:alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu.

The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN0888-2126), of which this is volume C,number 4, is published in August, Sep-tember, December, March, and June bySwarthmore College, 500 College Avenue,Swarthmore PA 19081-1390. Periodicalspostage paid at Swarthmore PA andadditional mailing offices. Permit No.0530-620. Postmaster: Send addresschanges to Swarthmore College Bulletin,500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA19081-1390.

©2003 Swarthmore CollegePrinted in U.S.A.

There are asurprising number ofbooks about thissmall college—a testament to itsrich history andpowerful impact onAmerican education.

UNFAIRI must take issue with your titles for thetwo very critical letters about Teach forAmerica (“Letters,” December Bulletin).The original article (“Teaching forChange,” a profile of Kevin Huffman ’92,September Bulletin) pointed out changes inthe program about which Patrick Runkle’98 was very derisive. The title of Runkle’sletter (“Foul Stench”) was unfair, in myopinion. A second letter from NathanMyers ’99 was more balanced. But thereagain, you emphasized “hypocrisy.”

I confess I’m prejudiced because agranddaughter has been in Teach for Amer-ica for four years, and a grandson is in hissecond year.

CAROLYN KEYES CADWALLADER ’36Newtown Square, Pa.

ROLL UP OUR SLEEVESAfter reading the letters “Foul Stench” and“Hypocrisy” about Teach for America(TFA), I feel compelled to set the recordstraight on a few key points.

Endemic to much of the criticism thatTFA has received over the years is a dis-turbing tendency to rely on unproven theo-ry and isolated anecdotes. These two lettersfall into this trap. The facts are pretty clearthat most of TFA’s corps members are suc-cessful. In a recent independent survey ofthe school principals of TFA corps mem-bers, nearly 80 percent of principals ratedthem as more effective than other begin-ning teachers with whom they had worked.And in a study by Stanford University’sCenter for Research in Educational Out-comes, the students of TFA corps membersin Houston recorded gains as great orgreater than students of non–TFA col-leagues in every grade level and subjectarea.

About 87 percent of TFA corps mem-bers complete their two-year commitmentsin their original placement schools. PatrickRunkle conveniently failed to note that hewas one of the few TFA participants whoquit the program without honoring theircommitments. Runkle’s bizarre willingnessto make sweeping (and damning) general-izations about the community in which hewas placed runs counter to TFA’s mostbasic philosophies. After spending one yearin teaching, he apparently was able todetermine (1) that “education will get younowhere” in rural Louisiana and (2) that

these districts are “beyond help” and “notinterested in change.” The fact that hewould actually refer to his former schooldistrict as “beyond help” cuts againsteverything I believe about public educa-tion. Many of us who taught in dirty trail-ers in low-income neighborhoods left thecorps with diametrically opposite perspec-tives, having seen firsthand that our stu-dents could exceed grade-level expectationsand outperform their more affluent peers.

Nathan Myers’ letter furthers thestrong tradition in public education debateof framing issues in black and white:Either you get a Swarthmore-quality certi-fication program, or you get thrown to thewolves; either you give low-income familiesexperienced and highly trained teachers orill-prepared novices. I see the same tautolo-gies constructed in nearly every other edu-cation reform debate—school choice, char-ter schools, high-stakes testing, and multi-cultural curricula.

I suppose at the end of the day, we havetwo choices. We can, as Runkle’s letter sug-gests, look at the centuries of poverty andracism that have created the currentinequities, throw up our hands in despair,and declare that the schools serving ourpoorest citizens are beyond repair. Or wecan roll up our sleeves and work tirelesslyto address the inequities head-on.

KEVIN HUFFMAN ’92Vice President and General Counsel

Teach for AmericaNew York

REFUGEESI appreciated very much the article on mid-century faculty émigrés (“Émigré: The Col-lege as a Place of Refuge,” December Bul-letin).

By the late 1940s, as World War IIbegan to recede in day-to-day life, theSwarthmore campus was home to not onlythese faculty members but also to severalstudents who were refugees.

We fled the Nazi onslaught on Europeas youngsters. By 1950, we were more orless Americanized, but there still was (Ispeak only for myself) a sense of beingoutsiders and uprooted—albeit enormous-ly fortunate, saved by fate, miracles, andpure random events or the prescience, wis-dom, and capability of parents whobrought us out of the Holocaust. Each ofus had a story, but we were only vaguelyaware of how the others survived.

THOMAS REINER ’52New York

NOT THE WHOLE STORYThe December Bulletin article about theparticipation of Marcia Grant ‘60 in thedevelopment and launch of a women’s col-lege in Saudi Arabia (“Liberal Arts in aConservative Land”) was absolutely amaz-ing for what it left out.

Saudi Arabia is a nation with, shall wesay, a somewhat spotty human rightsrecord. The country is ruled by a corruptmonarchy; human rights there are largelynonexistent. Although, as Marcia Grantpoints out, it is simplistic to think thatwomen are oppressed simply because ofIslam, they are unquestionably oppressed.This is a nation that once held the Westhostage with an oil embargo and has put agreat deal of money and effort into tryingto destroy Israel. To quote the HumanRights WatchWorld Report 2001:

Freedom of expression and associa-tion were nonexistent rights, politi-cal parties and independent localmedia were not permitted, and evenpeaceful antigovernment activitiesremained virtually unthinkable.Infringements on privacy, institu-tionalized gender discrimination,harsh restrictions on the exercise ofreligious freedom, and the use ofcapital and corporal punishment

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SWARTHMORE SENIOR MATTLANDREMAN HAS A RADIANTSMILE—and a lot to be smilingabout these days. One of 32Americans chosen from 981applicants for the prestigiousRhodes Scholarship, the physicsmajor will head to Oxford nextfall for two to three years of fullypaid study there. Since beingselected, he says, “I keep think-ing of Dean Bob Gross’ [’62]statement to us as freshmen:‘You are not an admissions mis-take.’”

For three years, Landreman,who hails from St. Paul, Minn.,researched alongside AssociateProfessor of Physics MichaelBrown, a plasma physics spe-cialist. Landreman’s interest liesin fusion power, which he sees

as a solution for the world’senvironmental problems.

Brown and Landreman havebeen working with the Swarth-more Spheromak, a machinebuilt by Brown six years ago,which can reproduce processesthat occur on the Sun’s surface.Landreman’s research has beenconcerned particularly withmagnetic reconnection, a pro-cess in which magnetic energy isconverted into heat and high-energy particles that cause thesolar atmosphere to be 1,000times hotter than the Sun’s sur-face. Because of its impact onsolar physics and its potentialfor helping provide a clean, safeenergy source in the future,Brown’s research has been fund-ed by the National Science

Foundation and by the U.S.Department of Energy.

Landreman’s research has ledto co-authorship of two articlesin the journals The Physics ofPlasma and The AstrophysicalJournal, and he has been recog-nized by the American PhysicalSociety.

Disarmingly modest, Landre-man credits Swarthmore, atleast partially, for the scholar-ship. “Where else would under-graduates have the opportunityto work so closely with someonelike Mike Brown or write reviewarticles?” he asks.

As a participant in theUpward Bound Program forthree semesters, Landreman hastaught physics to students fromChester High School. He is amember of the Swarthmorecross-country team. And hefounded “Food for Thought,” abread-baking business, where,once a week, students makebread by hand in their dormito-ries, sell it to fellow students,and donate the proceeds toPhiladelphia charities.

During his time in Europe,Landreman plans to travel, espe-cially to visit his former hostfamily in Hungary, where hespent fall semester 2001 in aStudy Abroad Program formathematicians. “I’m lookingforward to relaxing a bit,” hesays.

In Oxford, he will studymathematics, which he says hasa broader definition there thanhere. “In Oxford, there’s nofusion program,” he says, “but Iwill study aspects of physicsthat are related to it.”

—Carol Brévart-Demm

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L a n d r e m a n ’ 0 3R e c e i v e s R h o d e s

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MATT LANDREMAN (RIGHT) CREDITS

SWARTHMORE—AND HIS THREE

YEARS OF RESEARCH WITH

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF

PHYSICS MICHAEL BROWN—FOR

HIS RHODES SCHOLARSHIP.

BLACK ALUMNI EVENTTO BE HELD IN JUNEBLACK ALUMNI WEEKEND, heldfor many years on campus inMarch, is scheduled this year inconjunction with the College’sAlumni Weekend on June 6 to 8.A special program for blackalumni will begin on Thursdayevening, June 5, and runthrough Friday.

In a February letter to blackalumni announcing the change,Vincent Jones ’98, chair of theevent, wrote that, with the eventin June, “those of us who havereunions won’t have to choosebetween the March and Juneweekends…. [It will] allow us toconnect with members of theSwarthmore community and otherblack alums at events plannedjust for us.” These will include anAfrican dance workshop, a recep-tion with President Alfred H.Bloom, a Caribbean dinner, andthe opportunity to choose amongthe three Friday evening pro-grams open to all alumni.

One of those programs will be“A Politically Incorrect Forum,”featuring six prominent blackalumni in a panel discussionmoderated by Associate Professorof History Allison Dorsey.

Attendance at the separateMarch weekend had been declin-ing in recent years, said AstridDevaney, associate director ofalumni relations, adding thathousing will be offered in Collegedormitories—something that wasnot possible during the semester.

Lisa Lee ’81, director of alum-ni relations, welcomed thechange: “Many affinity groupshold gatherings or receptionsduring Alumni Weekend, and theyreally enjoy the opportunity tointeract with alums of all ages.We welcome the decision toschedule the Black AlumniReunion in June and hope that itresults in terrific attendance.”

—Jeffrey Lott

SWARTHMORE JOINS BRIEF IN MICHIGAN CASESSWARTHMORE HAS JOINED SEVERAL OTHER SELECTIVEPRIVATE COLLEGES and universities in filing an amicus brief ina key affirmative action case now before the U.S. Supreme Court.The brief argues that affirmative action in the admissions processis essential not only to the educational programs of the institu-tions but to their broader mission to benefit society.

The case stems from suits brought against the University ofMichigan and the University of Michigan Law School. The whiteplaintiffs claim that they were unfairly denied admission becauseof policies designed to increase the number of minority students atthe schools. They are asking the court to overturn its historic 1978Bakke decision allowing the consideration of race in universityadmissions.

The brief, submitted in February, concludes its arguments, “TheFourteenth Amendment, Title VI, and 42 U.S.C. 1981 leave collegesand universities free to select those students who, in their judg-ment and as Bakke contemplated, will, individually and collectively,take fullest advantage of what the college has to offer, contributemost to the educational process, and use what they have learnedfor the benefit of the larger society. In making these judgments,colleges and universities may take into account race or ethnic back-

ground as one of various factors to be competitively considered,without quotas.”

Maurice Eldridge ’61, vice president for College and communityrelations and executive assistant to President Alfred H. Bloom, saidthat Bloom was first contacted by President Thomas Gerety ofAmherst College.

“We were pleased to be able to help craft this important argu-ment,” said Eldridge. “Swarthmore is strongly committed to pro-viding opportunity for minority students and to sustaining abroadly inclusive and diverse educational community, and al-though as a private college we might seem to be less affected by theMichigan case, we are deeply worried as an institution about thetrends we see and the chilling effect an adverse decision wouldhave across institutions nationally. This brief reflects of our com-mitment to diversity, not only here at Swarthmore but in the largersociety.”

In addition to Amherst and Swarthmore, the brief was joinedby Bates, Bowdoin, Bryn Mawr, Carleton, Colby, Connecticut,Davidson, Holyoke, Oberlin, Pomona, Sarah Lawrence, Smith,Trinity, Vassar, Washington and Lee,Wellesley, and Williams col-leges and Colgate,Wesleyan, and Tufts universities. The SupremeCourt is expected to rule in the cases by the end of its current term.

—Jeffrey Lott

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COMMITTEE STUDIESLIVING WAGE OPTIONS

THE NEWEST FORUM FOR DISCUSSIONS oncompensation of Swarthmore’s lowest-paidstaff members is a committee of staff,faculty, and students, which began meetingin November. Now in the process of gather-ing data, the committee will examine fourkey areas: the costs of potential wageincreases, alternatives to wage increases,government entitlement programs, andwage compression issues.

The committee, co-chaired by AssociateVice President of Human Resources Melanie

Young, continues the work of the Staff Com-pensation Review Committee (CRC), whichmade several recommendations in fall 2001,including a $9 an hour “Swarthmore mini-mum wage.” The previous hiring minimum atthe College was $6.66 an hour; the federalminimum wage is now $5.35.

The CRC’s recommendations received theendorsement of top administrators and theFinance Committee of the Board of Managers,but members of the student-driven LivingWage and Democracy Campaign found faultwith some of them. Among their counterpro-posals was a minimum wage of $13 an hour.

“The CRC’s work is a backdrop, and we're

simply revisiting it to see whether we can dobetter than $9,” says committee co-chairBarry Schwartz, Dorwin P. Cartwright Profes-sor of Social Theory and Social Action. “Ourmandate is to come up with a set of practi-cal recommendations with regard to thewages of lowest-paid staff—estimatingcosts, identifying possible unintended nega-tive consequences, and suggesting ways toprevent them.”

Meanwhile, the CRC is continuing itswork on staff compensation issues. Its latestproject is a review of the College’s job-grad-ing system.

—Alisa Giardinelli

NEW DIRECTOR FORCAREER SERVICES

IN FEBRUARY, NANCY BURKETTbecame Swarthmore’s new direc-tor of career services. FormerDirector Tom Francis announcedlast year that he wanted toreduce his responsibilities andbecome associate director of theoffice that he has headed since1985.

Burkett comes to Swarthmorefrom Wagner College, where she

was director of career services.She previously worked for 10years as a career services officerat the College of William andMary. Dean of the College BobGross ’62 praised Burkett’s “obvi-ous enthusiasm and interperson-al skills and her understandingof the role that Career Servicescan play in a liberal artscollege.”

The Career Services Officeprovides information and coun-seling to students, alumni, and

employers. Students get helpresearching career opportunities,preparing resumes, findinginternships, and interviewingwith potential employers. Theoffice also provides advice aboutgraduate and professional schoolapplications. Many of theseservices are also available toSwarthmore alumni, who canlearn more at http://www.-swarthmore.edu/Admin/-career_services/.

—Jeffrey Lott NANCY BURKETT

Bed-and-Breakfast in the VilleWHO COULD RESIST THE APPEAL of a couple of nights spent inH.W. Longfellow’s house? In the near future, campus visitors willhave the option of staying in, among other places, at least anarchitectural replica of Longfellow’s Cambridge, Mass., mansion—right in the heart of Swarthmore.

On Jan. 13, when Swarthmore Borough Council unanimouslypassed the long-awaited ordinance permitting the establishmentof bed-and-breakfasts (B&Bs) in Swarthmore, Joanne Cline,owner of the soon-to-be “Longfellow B&B,” was the first to applyfor an application.More applications have arrived since then.

The ordinance, which restricts the establishment of B&Bs totwo per block and a maximum of four rooms per house, has beenunder discussion for several years.

“There’s been a real need [for guest accommodation] for a longtime in Swarthmore,” said Cline, who has been hosting interna-tional students in her home for the past 20 years.With three dou-ble bedrooms to let, she is looking forward to making life easier forCollege visitors by providing comfortable lodgings and home-cooked breakfasts. She anticipates being ready to receive guests byspringtime and is already answering inquiries.

In the meantime, conversations with the borough are continu-ing about the possibility of an inn and restaurant being developedon College land.

—Carol Brévart-Demm

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ASTRONOMERS HAVE A DIFFER-ENT IDEA about the age ofthings. For instance, a group of“young” stars recently discoveredby a Swarthmore research teamis 30 million years old. As is thecase with many astronomical dis-coveries, they did not discovernew stars per se but ratherlearned something new aboutstars whose existence had beenknown.

“What’s new here is our real-ization of how young these stars

are,” says astronomy major RabiWhitaker, who has been workingwith Assistant Professor ofAstronomy Eric Jensen as part ofher senior thesis. “If you thinkof our Sun as middle-aged, thesestars are like babies that areonly a few weeks old.” The starsare also relatively close toEarth—just 100 to 200 light-years away.

Jensen and Whitaker an-nounced the findings in Januaryat the American AstronomicalSociety’s annual meeting. New

knowledge about the stars couldopen the door to new under-standing of planet formation.“Their ages are just right forthem to be forming planets rightnow, and their proximity makesthem easier to observe,” Jensensays. “These stars are perfectcandidates for follow-up observa-tions to help us understandplanet formation. By observingthese stars as part of a larger

sample of stars of similar ages,we can get an idea of how fre-quently stars form planetary sys-tems and exactly when in a star’slife cycle planets are formed.” Hecautions that it is not yet knownwhether there are planets orbit-ing any of these stars.

The evidence for the stars’youth comes from observationsmade in August 2002 with theNational Science Foundation’s 4-meter telescope at Cerro TololoInter-American Observatory inChile. Spectra of the stars showthe presence of a large amountof the element lithium. As a starages, nuclear reactions graduallydestroy the lithium atoms thatwere part of its initial chemicalmakeup. Thus, the more lithiumpresent in a star, the less timethe star has had to destroy it,hence the younger the star.

Jensen expects still moreyoung stars to be found in thenear future. The Swarthmoreteam has more observations ofpromising candidates scheduledfor April.

—Tom Krattenmaker

JOANNE CLINE PLANS TO OPEN A B&B IN SWARTHMORE DURING

THE SPRING THAT IS A REPLICA OF H.W. LONGFELLOW’S MANSION

IN CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

RABI WHITAKER ’03 WAITS FOR

NIGHTFALL AT CERR0 TOLOLO

OBSERVATORY IN CHILE.

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WILLIAM ELMORE

THE COLLEGE MOURNS the death of Mor-ris L. Clothier Professor Emeritus of PhysicsWilliam Cronk Elmore on Jan. 23 at age 93.

After earning a B.S. in engineeringphysics from Lehigh University in 1932 anda Ph.D. from Yale three years later, Elmorebegan his career as a physics instructor atMIT. In 1938, he joined Swarthmore’sphysics faculty, retiring in 1974. He servedas department chair from 1948 to 1968.

Elmore is fondly remembered by hisstudents for his integration of imaginativelaboratory work with theoretical content.His former colleague, also Morris L. Cloth-ier Professor Emeritus of Physics, MarkHeald says: “Bill was the principal mentorin my professional life. For faculty of mygeneration, he was an inspiration.” Elmoreand Heald co-wrote the 1969 textbookPhysics of Waves, which is still in print.

During World War II, Elmore conductedresearch at the Bartol Research Laboratory

on the College campus and was recruited towork for two years on the Manhattan Proj-ect at Los Alamos, playing a major role indeveloping electronic circuits to handle thefast-pulse signals needed in the develop-ment of the atomic bomb. In 1949, he wasco-author with Matt Sands of Electronics:Experimental Techniques as part of theNational Nuclear Energy Series. The book

became the standard reference work of prac-tical electronics for a generation of physicsgraduate students in the 1950s. In 1957, hereturned to Los Alamos to work with thecontrolled fusion group and was a delegateto the second Atoms for Peace Conferencein Geneva.

In 1965, Elmore received a DistinguishedService Citation from the American Associa-tion of Physics Teachers and was elected afellow of the American Physical Society.Also an accomplished musician, Elmoreplayed accordion at square dances in LosAlamos and was the founding pianist of theSwarthmore faculty dance band The Moon-shiners.

He was predeceased by his wife of 66years, Barbara, on Jan. 1. Known for her life-long love of art, she joined Swarthmore’sfledgling arts and crafts department in 1954and taught jewelry, enameling, and pottery.Her efforts led to the establishment of thestudio arts program on campus.—Carol Brévart-Demm and Alisa Giardinelli

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BILL AND BARBARA ELMORE’S CONTRIBUTIONS

TO SWARTHMORE COLLEGE WERE A TEAM EFFORT.

MARK HEALD SAID THE ANNUAL HONORS DINNER

PARTIES AT THEIR HOME WERE “LEGENDARY.”

BARBARA PEARSONLANGE GODFREY

THE COLLEGE COMMUNITY WAS DEEPLYSADDENED by news of the death of DeanEmerita of Women Barbara Pearson LangeGodfrey ’31 on Feb. 4 at age 92.

Godfrey, the daughter of Edna and PaulPearson, was born in the Benjamin WestHouse in 1910. Her father was professor ofpublic speaking and founder of the Swarth-more Chautauqua. After attending the Col-lege with a White Open Scholarship for twoyears, she transferred to the Yale School ofDrama. In 1932, she married Gordon Lange.They had three children: Julie, Josie, andJonathan.

Returning to Swarthmore, Godfreyserved as director of dramatics for 17 years.Thomas Blackburn, Centennial ProfessorEmeritus of English Literature, said: “Bar-bara was a vital part of the creative andartistic life of the College, when those activ-ities were not yet permitted to the fullstanding of the curriculum. She could getamateur actors to do things they neverdreamed they could do.”

Because of Godfrey’s positive relation-ship with students, she was appointed deanof women by President Courtney Smith,serving from 1962 to 1969. During thattime, she continued to direct faculty stageproductions. From 1968 to 1970, she servedas director of career planning and place-ment.

In 1960, Godfrey received the John W.Nason Award for her distinctive and lasting

service to the College.Two years after Lange’s death in 1979,

she married Warren Godfrey. After retire-ment, she maintained strong links toSwarthmore, serving as reunion activitychair, admissions interviewer, on-campusevent speaker, and class co-secretary, a posi-tion she held for almost six years until herdeath.

In 2001, aided by daughter Julie, shepublished a compilation of her father’s let-ters, photos, lecture notes, and plays titledMan of Chautauqua and His Caravans ofCulture: The Life of Paul M. Pearson.

Her connection to the College is furtherstrengthened by family ties. Godfrey’sdaughter Julie Lange Hall and son-in-lawParker Hall are both members of the Classof ’55. Her late brothers, Drew and LeonPearson, were members of the classes of ’19and ’20, respectively.

In a 1999 Bulletin article, Editor JeffreyLott wrote: “She observed Swarthmore Col-lege from its Quaker roots to the thresholdof the new century. For most of that time, ithas never been far from her thoughts.”—Carol Brévart-Demm and Alisa Giardinelli

BARBARA PEARSON LANGE GODFREY

WAS BORN ON THE SWARTHMORE CAMPUS AND

DEVOTED HER LIFE TO THE COLLEGE.

F a r e w e l l t o Tw o G o o d F r i e n d s

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R e d e f i n i n g “ d o m i n i o no v e r t h e e a r t h ”

SOMEOPPONENTSOF THEANTI-SUV “WHATWOULDJESUS DRIVE?” CAMPAIGNcharge that it smacks of paganEarth worship. But MarkWal-lace, associate professor ofreligion, says there is amplebiblical basis for protectingthe Earth’s environment.

“From the story of Genesisto Jesus’ words in the NewTestament, the idea comesthrough that the goodness ofcreation is our inheritance,something we must preserveand pass on to the next gener-ation—not something wepossess to exploit and abuse,”says Wallace, who is at workon a book about the relation-ship between Christianityand environmentalism.

One reason behind tradi-tional Christian apathytoward the environment,Wal-lace says, is a misunderstand-ing of the biblical principle ofhuman “dominion” overEarth.Wallace, who is expertin Hebrew, translates theHebrew word for “dominion”to mean “stewardship”—not“control” or “ownership” as itis often understood.

Another reason for the dis-connection between Christi-anity and ecology is the tradi-

tional conception of God asseparate from the Earth—a“sky God,” as Wallace phrasesit. But Wallace believes thewidely accepted theory ofincarnation argues for a Godof the Earth,meaning thathumans honor God by rever-ing and protecting creation.

Wallace finds still morebiblical support for environ-mental protection in state-ments by Jesus. In the “Ser-mon on theMount,” Jesusspeaks of birds and the beau-ty of flowers,Wallace notes.“Jesus shows a kind of inti-macy with the beauty of cre-ation,” he says. “This intimacyteaches people today to beequally loving toward the nat-ural world. To me, that meanswe ought to develop appro-priate and sustainable tech-nologies.”

Wallace says he is encour-aged by signs that someChristian movements areaccepting responsibility forthe environment. “If Christi-anity doesn’t wake up to ourenvironmental crisis,” he says,“it’s going to be partly respon-sible for everything we’re fac-ing today, from pesticides inour food to global warming.”

—TomKrattenmaker

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“If Christianity

doesn’t wake

up to our

environmental

crisis, it’s going

to be partly

responsible

for everything

we’re facing today,

from pesticides

in our food to

global warming.”

KUHARSKI AWARDED ORDER OFMERIT IN POLISH CULTURE

ALLEN KUHARSKI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSORand chair of the Department of Theater, wasawarded the Order of Merit in Polish Culturefor his work promoting cultural exchanges intheater and dance between the United Statesand Poland. The award is the highest honorgiven by the Polish Ministry of Culture andNational Heritage. It was presented inNovember in Manhattan by Pawel Potoroczyn,director of the Polish Cultural Institute in

New York City, on behalf of WaldemarDabrowski, Poland’s minister of culture.

Kuharski has worked closely with interna-tionally acclaimed Polish choreographer JacekLuminski and the Silesian Dance Theatre toestablish the College’s study abroad programin theater and dance in Poland.

Kuharski is also a widely publishedauthority on various aspects of Polish theaterand drama, in particular the work of play-wright Witold Gombrowicz.

—Angela Doody

NASA

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(After Joy Harjo’s “One Cedar Tree”)

When you dance in the woodsyour feet touch dirt

on every third whistle of the wind

With whom do you waltz?the gallant tree lily

or the staid hemlock?

Twirl,the leaves mimic your steps. The groundspinning, following your lead

and the creeksashays into a fluid flourish.

Stop. Wait. Pose,For a grass-breath.

Then, with a flick-of-a-wrist,a toss-of-a-head,

your toes tap a green rhythmand you spin among boughs.

Fingers furl upwardtracing the sky.

Jump, turn, and bend to the whistling wind,You feel a part of the grand pas de deux

But turn,look over your shoulder,

the trees do not moveonly you do.

—Evelyn Khoo ’05

FOUR JOIN BOARDOF MANAGERS

THE COLLEGE WELCOMESFOUR NEWMEMBERS tothe Board of Managers.Elected at the Decembermeeting, Tralance Addy ’69and Nancy Hengen ’73 willserve as Alumni Managers,Gil Kemp ’72 will serve as aTerm Manager, and DanRothenberg ’95 is a YoungAlumni Manager.

Addy is the founder,president, and CEO of ven-

ture development and manage-ment company Plebys Interna-tional LLC and president andCEO of Plebys-supportedWaterHealth International Inc.

Hengen is a partner in thelaw firm of Holland & Knight.Kemp is the founder and presi-dent of Home Decoration Collec-tors, a mail-order catalog.

Rothenberg is a co-founderand co-director of the Pig IronTheatre Company.

—Carol Brévart-Demm

TRAMPING THROUGH THE CRUMWOODSon a warm September day, 11 students pausewhile their guide, conservation ecologistand former Assistant Professor of BiologyRoger Latham, points out a colony of woollyaphids feasting on beech sap. The studentslaugh in wonder at the little creatures, hun-dreds of whom are waving what Myra Val-lianos ’05 would later term “those fluffybutts of theirs” into the wind. After Lathamexplains the symbiotic relationship betweenthe aphids and the beech tree, the studentsthrow the insects one last glance and moveon. Clutching their field journals, membersof Associate Professor of English LiteratureElizabeth Bolton’s Writing Nature class con-tinue their trek through the Crum.

Writing Nature is an unusual Englishcourse that combines field walks and eco-logical observation with creative writing andliterary analysis to provide students with thetools to express their biological and emo-tional connections with the Crum. Boltonsays she designed the class (taught mostrecently in fall 2002) for two practical rea-sons—the need for more humanities cours-es within the environmental studies concen-tration and the oversubscription of moretraditional creative-writing workshops with-in the English Department. But she alsowanted to help students better appreciatethe Crum as a valuable parcel of nature in

the midst of suburbia.“The Crum is the one refuge from subur-

ban sprawl around here,” says Bolton.“There’s something healing and soothingabout the woods.”

The course thus began with a series offield walks, both with Latham and RhodaMaurer, plant records supervisor of theScott Arboretum. Students then moved onto writing their own nonfiction essays andpoetry, while simultaneously reading andcritically responding to a variety of naturewriting from Shakespeare to Terry TempestWilliams. As a culminating project, studentscompleted a class anthology Taproot: Com-municating the Crum.

Sonal Shah ’05 says she thought theclass was tied together by the shared goal of“communicating the Crum. There was asense of camaraderie among the studentsand Professor Bolton that was cemented byour early morning walks.”

Bolton hopes future offerings of thecourse will tie together better the increasedecological focus with the actual writingprocess. Still, she thinks that the intensiveengagement with the Crum provided stu-dents with a shared creative perspective. “Ifeverybody’s working and writing on theCrum, that tends to unite the class in termsof having a common project.”

—Elizabeth Redden ’05

Communicating the Crum When you dance in the woods

TRALANCE ADDY NANCY HENGEN GIL KEMP DAN ROTHENBERG

JEFF

HURW

ITZ

ERIC WAGNER IS A DEDICATED SOCCER COACH AND FAN, but hisvision extends well beyond the field. So when he heard news reportsof the worsening famine in Ethiopia, he tried to find a way to applyhis sport to the cause.

The result: Wagner and his Garnet soccer squad held a clinic forlocal school children on Super Bowl Sunday. The event attracted 60kids, raised nearly $900 for relief efforts, and—perhaps most impor-tant—generated awareness of the little-known famine on campusand in the surrounding communities.

“Athletics are what I do, but if I can make an impact on the widercommunity through sports—bring my two passions together—that’swhat really excites me,” Wagner says.

The brother of two Swarthmore alumnae (Lise ’85 and Karin ’90),Wagner became soccer coach at the College last year after a successfulfive-year run at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where he amassed aschool-record 49 victories. Wagner knew it would be a challenge torevive a Swarthmore soccer program that had been enduring somelean years. But he leapt at the chance.

“I think it’s a fantastic opportunity,” says Wagner, a 1988 Con-necticut College graduate who was a four-year letter winner as a mid-fielder and defender. “There is very strong administrative backing forthe program here at Swarthmore.We have good facilities. When

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S o c c e r a n dS e r v i c e

NEW SOCCER COACH ERIC WAGNER HAS RESPONDED TO

CHALLENGES BOTH ON AND OFF THE FIELD.

JIMGR

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HOOPS: WOMEN STRONG, MEN IMPROVE;SWIMMERS THIRD IN CONFERENCEWomen’s basketball (19–6, 12–3Centennial Conference [CC]) KatieRobinson was named CC Player ofthe Year. Robinson became the firstwoman to earn Player of the Yearhonors in back-to-back seasons. Thejunior guard led the conference inscoring (18.2 points per game), steals(4.39 per game [pg]), and free-throwpercentage (87.5) and was seventh infield-goal percentage (47), 15th inassists (2.48 pg), and 17th inrebounding (6.1 pg).

The co-captain also became thefifth woman in school history toeclipse the 1,000-point mark and set the school and CC record forcareer steals. Robinson is also on the Garnet’s career top-10 list inassists, rebounds, and field-goal percentage.

Senior guard Ali Furman closed out her career as the school’s topthree-point scorer and became just the second woman in the CC toreach the 200 mark. The co-captain finished ninth on the career-scoring list and fourth on the all-time assist list. Led by the top-ranked defense in the conference, which allowed 52.1 points pergame, the Garnet reached the CC play-offs for the fourth consecu-tive season.

Men’s basketball (9–16, 5–8 CC) At 9–16 overall and 5–8 in theCC, the Garnet posted its best record since the 1996–1997 season.The Garnet Tide was in the CC playoff hunt until the final game ofthe season, falling one game short of a postseason berth. Seniorguard David Pearce, named All-CC honorable mention, became the14th player in school history to eclipse the 1,000-point mark andclosed out his career as the Garnet Tide’s eighth leading scorer with1,107 points. Pearce also ranks fifth on the career steals list with 94,is eighth on the career three-point list with 89, and ranks 11th onthe career assists list with 177. Pearce also excelled in the classroomand was selected to the Verizon Academic All-America District IITeam. Junior point guard Jacob Letendre finished third in the CC inassist/turnover ratio (1.75) and was fifth in assists (84); his 37 steals

placed him in sixth place. Letendrealso moved up the Tide career ladderand is now in second place in assists(262) and steals (121). Sophomoreforward Matt Gustafson led the teamin scoring, averaging 15.6 points pergame and finished eighth in the CCscoring race. Sophomore Blair Haxelhad a breakthrough season, postingseven double doubles. The 6-foot 9-inch center averaged 12.5 points pergame, 9 rebounds, and 1.73 blocksper game. Haxel finished fourth inthe CC in rebounding and third inblocked shots.

ROBINSON: CENTENNIAL

PLAYER OF THE YEAR

PEARCE: BEST MEN’S RECORD

SINCE 1996–1997

JOHN

FERKO

JOHN

FERKO

you’re recruiting people, you’re ultimately selling the school. Well,Swarthmore is one of the easiest sells in the country because ofits reputation. Now the challenge is selling high school kids on asoccer program that’s been in the doldrums for a few years.”

It didn’t take long for the Swarthmore campus to find outabout Wagner’s penchant for putting soccer in the service of thecommunity. Realizing the opportunity afforded by a home gameon the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks,Wagner organ-ized a commemoration focusing on local “first responders.” Localpolice, fire, and rescue squads were honored before the game witha large crowd of students, staff members, and administrators inattendance. The student a cappella group Sixteen Feet sang theNational Anthem, and Ed Kline, chief of the Swarthmore Fire andProtective Association, kicked in the ceremonial first ball.

The Swarthmore squad showed improvement during Wagner’sfirst year as coach despite finishing with a 5–14–1 record. One ofthe Garnet’s top offensive producers was Anteneh Tesfaye, a sen-ior from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.Wagner immediately thought ofTesfaye when he heard about the famine there, which to this pointhas attracted little attention despite promising to surpass the1980s famine that became a global cause celebre. He enlisted Tes-faye as a co-organizer and got to work on the clinic.

“For me, soccer has always been more than a game or a com-petitive contest,” Wagner says. “It’s something to bring peopletogether.”

—Tom Krattenmaker

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COLLEGE CLAIMSVICTORY INLOCKHEED MARTINSHAREOWNER ACTION

DEFENSE CONTRACTORLOCKHEEDMARTIN decided inNovember to prohibit work-place discrimination based onsexual orientation. This deci-sion demonstrates the influ-ence that colleges and universi-ties can exert to bring aboutsocial and ethical change insociety, says Swarthmore’s VicePresident for Finance andTreasurer Suzanne Welsh.

The announcement, whichwas made to company employ-ees in an e-mail and reported inThe Washington Post, came daysafter LockheedMartin receivednotice fromSwarthmorethat the Collegeintended torefile a shareowner resolution,urging the company to bar dis-crimination on the basis of sex-ual orientation in its equalemployment opportunity policy.

“Among colleges and univer-sities with significant endow-ments, our status as sharehold-ers is an opportunity to influ-ence society,” says Welsh. “Ihope the College’s action helpslead the way for similar effortsin the future.”

Swarthmore first presentedits resolution at the company’sannual shareholders meeting inSan Diego on April 25, 2002.Although the resolution wasrejected by most shareholders,it exceeded the minimum per-centage of votes required forthe College to resubmit it.

Morgan Simon ’04, an hon-ors economics major whohelped spearhead the College’saction, read the news of Lock-heed’s decision via e-mail withtears and laughter. “I have been

involved in many social changeefforts, and sometimes it is dif-ficult to measure results,” shesays. “Having such a concretevictory gives me a lot of confi-dence and reinforces my hopethat all this work is worth theeffort.”

The resolution—the first inthe country solely initiated by acollege or university since theanti-apartheid movement inthe 1980s—is the work of theCollege’s Committee for Social-ly Responsible Investing. Thecommittee, chaired by HarvardUniversity Business Schoolprofessor emeritus and Boardof Managers member SamuelHayes III ’57, comprises stu-dents, College administrators,and members of the Investment

Committee of the Board. Thecommittee prepared the resolu-tion in consultation with theEquality Project, a nonprofitorganization in New Yorkdevoted to securing equality inthe workplace for lesbian, gay,bisexual, and transgenderedemployees.

Since the College first intro-duced its resolution, Lockheedhad faced increased pressure tochange its policy from itsemployees in GLOBAL (Gay,Lesbian, or Bisexual at Lock-heed Martin). In August, thecompany also received a zerorating from the Human RightsCampaign, a Washington,D.C.–based gay rights advocacygroup.

Buoyed by their success,Simon plans to work with thecommittee on building allianceswith other schools and findinganother resolution to file.

—Alisa Giardinelli

Men’s swimming (7–3, 5–1 CC) The Garnet finished in third placeat the CC Championships. Senior Mike Dudley led the way, earn-ing Outstanding Performer of the Meet honors. Dudley won the200 breaststroke (2:07.35), the 100 breaststroke (58:44), and the200 individual medley (IM) in 1:55.59, setting school records in allthree events as well as a CC and meet record in the 100 breast-stroke. John Lillvis ’03 won the 400 IM at the CC championshipsin 4:12.65. Earlier in the season, Lillvis set a Ware Pool record inthe 400 IM (4:20.33). David Whitehead ’03 won the 100 butterflyin 52.13. Dudley and Whitehead teamed with Eric Shang ’04 andMike Auerbach ’05 to win a silver medal in the 400 medley relay(3:35.07). Dudley,Whitehead, Auerbach, and Jeff Schneider ’05captured the bronze medal in the 200 medley relay (1:38.19). The800 freestyle relay team of Auerbach, Shang, Lillvis, and White-head also claimed a bronze medal, touching the wall in 7:12.66.

Women’s swimming (6–4, 4–3 CC) The quest for a three-peatcame to an end as the two-time defending CC Champions placedthird this year. Leah Davis ’04, Katie Stauffer ’05, Patricia Funk ’06,and Davita Burkhead-Weiner ’03 won the 200 freestyle relay in1:39.77. The relay team of Tara Trout ’04, Funk,Melanie Johncilla’05, and Burkhead-Weiner captured a silver medal in a NCAA B-cuttime of 7:56.57. Burkhead-Weiner and Davis won silver andbronze, respectively, in the 50 freestyle and later teamed with John-cilla and Funk to earn a bronze medal in the 400 freestyle relay(3:39.84). Burkhead-Weiner also earned a bronze medal in the 100freestyle (54.71).

—Mark Duzenski

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NOT LONG AFTER ARRIVING ON CAMPUS LASTFEBRUARY, I went to Sharples Dining Hall with several otherdeans.While enjoying lunch with a cross-section of students, Icouldn’t help overhearing three students behind me who were dis-cussing what it was like to be a Republican on campus. As they ate,they talked about how other students—and even some facultymembers—were not interested in hearing their perspective oncethey identified themselves as Republicans. Although they likedbeing part of the Swarthmore community and knew they werereceiving an excellent education, they felt marginalized—evensilenced—because of their political convictions.

I introduced myself to them as the new associate dean for multi-cultural affairs and asked if I might join them. I told them that Icouldn’t help overhearing their conversation and wanted to knowmore about their experience as young conservatives on a liberal col-lege campus. They were visibly surprised, wondering why the deanof multicultural affairs—who could not be other than a left-leaningliberal—was interested in what they had to say. After all, I was the“diversity guy,” and we all think we know what that means.

I had a very engaging conversation with these smart, conserva-tive young people. In the end, I told them that I had a very expan-sive definition of diversity—that it included not just race and eth-nicity but those who held different ideas and political beliefs, which

add an important dimension to the educational experience of allstudents. They agreed, but I could tell that they remained skepticalthat this black liberal’s idea of diversity included them.

Early in the fall semester, some members of the Republican clubasked my opinion of their plan to bring conservative commentatorDavid Horowitz to Swarthmore. Although I disagree with much ofwhat Horowitz usually has to say, I told them I would support theirproposal. I think it’s important—and very much within Swarth-more’s traditions—for the campus community to have the regularopportunity to engage all sorts of ideas, no matter how uncomfort-able it might be for some who disagree.

In early December, Horowitz spoke to an overflowing crowd inthe Friends Meetinghouse. He attacked liberals in general andhigher education in particular, saying, “this is the only chanceyou’re going to get to see someone talk the way I talk, thanks toyour totalitarian professors.” He derided the “hate-America” left.He railed against Democrats and peace activists and do-gooders,declaring that “every one of you is blessed to live in this country.”He said that Palestinians who put their children on the front linesof the Intifada were “worse than the Nazis.” To all this, I listenedrespectfully, along with several hundred students, faculty members,and staff. My conservative friends were delighted by the turnoutand by what Horowitz said.

MY INTERACTIONWITH CAMPUS REPUBLICANS and conversa-tions with other groups of Swarthmore students remind me that itwasn’t that long ago that college campuses were far less diversethan they are now.

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D o e sdiversity

i n c l u d e m e ?

DARRYL SMAW (CENTER) MEETS WITH CAMPUS REPUBLICANS OVER LUNCH.

HE VIEWS CAMPUS DIVERSITY AS ENCOMPASSING NOT ONLY

RACIAL AND ETHNIC GROUPS BUT ALL SORTS OF DIFFERENCES—INCLUDING

POLITICAL CONSERVATIVES AND FRATERNITY MEMBERS.

By Darryl Smaw, associate dean for multicultural affairs

JIMGR

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As the civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and’70s pricked the conscience of America, the landscape of predomi-nantly white college campuses began to change. Colleges and uni-versities saw the importance of having a diverse learning communi-ty and started to recruit minorities actively. Many single-sex col-leges became coeducational. These initiatives focused largely onproviding access, and it was easy for some to think that once cer-tain numbers were reached, the diversity goal had been achieved.

Yet with the passage of time, diversity came to represent muchmore. A 1997 report by the Association of American Colleges &Universities describes diversity on college campuses as encompass-ing “complex differences within the campus community and also inthe individuals who compose that community. It includes suchimportant and intersecting dimensions of human identity as race,ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, class,age, and ability. These dimensions do not determine or predict anyone person’s values, orientation, choices, or responses. But they areby definition closely related to patterns of societal experience,socialization, and affiliation. They influence ways of understandingand interpreting the world.”

Because diversity is about all of the ways we are different, it alsocan and should include political ideology and a host of other attrib-utes that have not always been ascribed to the term. Efforts to cre-ate a truly diverse community—whether on a campus, in a corpora-tion, or on a city block—can only succeed when institutions affirmthe inclusion of all members of community, not just the so-calledminorities.

A small college such as Swarthmore presents both opportunitiesand challenges in this regard. The College has, in large measure,achieved the numbers. Though African American and Hispanicmatriculation remains below what we might wish, one-third of stu-dents are persons of color. Thanks to generous financial aid andneed-blind admission, tremendous socioeconomic diversity exists.There are musicians and scientists and athletes and activists andliberals and, yes, conservatives. The College is a microcosm of theworld into which its students will graduate.

But what happens when you educate all these different studentson the same residential campus? How do they “get along?” Whathappens when they collide as a result of differing cultural assump-tions, values, and norms? Or when they express different politicaland ideological belief systems? How do they engage in the difficultconversations that require them to cross boundaries of ideologyand cultural safety and security? How does all this diversity con-tribute to the educational experience of students both inside andoutside of the classroom? Seeking answers to these and other ques-tions is now seen as the next step in achieving a diverse living/learning community.

With the achievement of diversity in numbers, new challenges

have emerged on campuses: acts of prejudice, bigotry, discrimina-tion, sexual and racial harassment, and insensitive language havebeen directed at this new population of students. In the classroom,residence halls, and social lives of students, such acts have servedto foster feelings of alienation and separation—even at Swarth-more. Last fall, a white student attended a Halloween party inblackface—a thoughtless act that was deeply hurtful to many of hisfellow students. This occurred within days of several other acts thatwere offensive to several groups on campus. It took weeks ofintense work by all of the students involved—including the offend-er, who was truly sorry—to turn this “incident” into a learningexperience.

THE CHALLENGE TODAY IS TO CREATE OPPORTUNITIES for stu-dents to come together and discuss such complex issues, to learnfrom each other how true diversity works. Although Swarthmore isa leader in the effort to move beyond numbers and focus on creat-ing a campus that authentically embraces and celebrates diversity, itis not an easy task. The greatest challenge is to help students findcommon ground amid the range of people and ideas they

encounter on campus.Moreover, because campuses literally renewthemselves each year when new students arrive, an additional chal-lenge is to create programs that transform, adapt, and change withthe diversity found in each class.

Therefore, according to Myrtis Powell in The Multicultural Cam-pus: Strategies for Transforming Higher Education (Altamira, 1998),student affairs professionals such as myself must “act as both cata-lysts and facilitators, as helpers and prodders; [we] must both influ-ence and help shape the multicultural campus.” At the same time,the work of diversity is not solely that of the deans and administra-tion. Although we are on the front lines of setting the tone as tohow students from diverse backgrounds can live and learn together,success requires the engagement and commitment of everyone oncampus: faculty, students, administrators, and staff.

This is an exciting time to be at Swarthmore. The College recog-nizes that “stage two” is needed to create an inclusive, multiculturalliving/learning community and is firmly committed to the difficultwork necessary. Although our campus community will always be awork in progress, I believe that it will one day model for our stu-dents the inherent strengths of a pluralistic society. No road mapis available to accomplish this goal—either at a college or inAmerica—and many obstacles are ahead. But this work is essentialfor the world into which our students will graduate.T

Darryl Smaw, associate dean for multicultural affairs, was previouslyassociate dean for program development at the Harvard Graduate Schoolof Education. Among his duties at Swarthmore is to serve as adviser tothe Phi Si fraternity.

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AlthoughSwarthmore is aleader in the effort tomove beyond numbers and focus on creating a campus that

authentically embraces and celebrates diversity, it isnot an easy task.

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Folk dancing is anything but a spectatorsport. As a newcomer to the Scottishdance class, I sit hunched in a corner.

Watching the more experienced dancers, I tryto look inconspicuous. Dancing—I will bethe first to say—has never really been myforte.

The music to one dance ends. It’s lightand jumpy—a sort of doo-doo-doo that goeson for several bars. On the stage, live musi-cians play—piano, guitars, even bagpipes.The music is uplifting and absorbing, and Iam perfectly content to just listen andwatch.

No such luck. Looking for a new partner,a young man comes over, holds out a hand,smiles, and asks if I’d care to dance. It’sdelightfully archaic—a gesture from a timewhen “courtship” still meant something. I

protest: “I can’t dance. Really, I’m not verygood.”

“Can you walk?” he asks.Good point. I follow him to the floor and

join a line of about 20 dancers. I lookaround nervously, receiving a thumbs-up signfrom one and a reassuring smile from anoth-er. I grab my partner’s hand, imitating hislight hopping motion, which switches fromthe ball of one foot to the toe of the otherand back again. I kind of get it. My move-ment isn’t perfect, but no one expects it tobe. Everyone learns the step, pivots aroundeach other, and walks through the rotationsa few times. The music begins again; “sixbars,” the teacher calls.

Scottish dancing is harder—and easier—than it looks. The precise steps elude me;that, I know, will take time. Still, I get the

overall motion, the pattern I must follow toexecute my part. I can hardly help not to, asmy fellow dancers eagerly direct me at everystep. They’re so helpful, so open; they know,as I will soon learn, that the dance worksonly if everyone does it together. I lift myheel, kick my opposite toe out, and give itmy best shot. A smile spreads across myface—I’m not half as bad as I thought.

“Remember we were all new once. You’redoing great,” I hear. My partner gentlynudges me to the correct corner after my last“pas de basque.”

I can’t help but trust him.

THE 32ND ANNUAL ENGLISH-SCOTTISH BALL,

HELD THIS YEAR ON FEB. 8 IN THE ALL-CAMPUS

SPACE OF CLOTHIER HALL, IS THE HIGHLIGHT OF

THE COLLEGE’S FOLK-DANCE SEASON.

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Skipping and step-ping their way

into College history,members of Swarth-more’s Folk Dance Clubhave gathered to enjoyjust such dances formore than 50 years. Sec-ond only to The Phoenixas the most venerableextracurricular activityon campus, folk dancecan be traced back to the1940s, when Irene Moll,an instructor in thePhysical Education De-partment, started a folkdance class. The activi-ty—and what somemight call a folk-dancing

subculture—has thrived at Swarthmore ever since.Yet this year, for the first time in its history, the Folk Dance Club

has found itself in a perilous position. The growth of the curricularDance Program has put a premium on time in the College’s dancestudios.With the expansion of the academic Dance Program, folkdance—an extracurricular social activity—has had to move to theSwarthmore Community Club, located just off-campus not far fromthe Pittenger, Palmer, and Roberts residence halls.

“I think we’ve all been frustrated by the constant struggle tofind time and space in the dance studios over the past few years,”says Hollis Easter ’03, co-president of the club and a four-yeardancer. “This year, the Dance Program told us they didn’t have roomfor us at all, and I think it’s fair to say we were disappointed by thatdecision.”

“The studios [in the Lang Performing Arts Center or LPAC] wereconstructed for the use of the academic Dance Program. Thesespaces are our laboratories,” explains Sharon Friedler, Stephen LangProfessor of Performing Arts and director of the Dance Programwithin the Department of Music and Dance. “Folk dance has been a

very important community in the Swarthmore lexicon for years. Ithink it’s wonderful, and as long as we were able to accommodate it,we did. But in the 10 years since the opening of the LPAC, theentire performance-based Dance Program—both curricular and co-curricular—has expanded.”

Swarthmore’s Dance Program, first granted academic status inthe late 1970s, has grown significantly under the leadership ofFriedler. Since she arrived at the College in 1985, the program hasprovided instruction in a wide variety of dance techniques, currentlyincluding African, Balinese, ballet, contact improvisation, flamenco,Kathak, modern, tap, and yoga. The program also offers composi-tion courses, repertory classes, and instructions in the study ofdance history and theory—all taught in the LPAC studios. “Theprogram looks at dance forms from all over the world, linking prac-tice and theory,” explains Friedler.

Between 300 and 350 students now enroll in dance classes eachsemester and, as Friedler points out, performance dance initiativesare not limited to the formal technique classes but also include stu-

dent-run choreography projects. Current student-run performancedance organizations include Dance Forum, Rhythm ’N’ Motion,and Terpsichore—and all of these courses, performance projects,and groups require time in the two studios.

Folk dance—a social dance form—is not included within therealm of performance dance. “We’ve made an effort to build aninclusive—not exclusive—program,” says Friedler. “But the factremains that we are interested in dance as a performance art. Weapplaud and support and are delighted that people wish to folkdance. I folk dance myself. But it’s a different thing than what we’reinvolved in as a department.”

Timothy Williams ’64, professor emeritus of biology and a for-

The expansion of the curricularDance Program has presented

new challenges fortraditional folk dancers.

F O L K D A N C E A T S W A R T H M O R E E N D U R E S I N A N E W H O M E .

By El izabeth Redden ’05 Photographs by Elefther ios Kostans

Steppingand Shifting

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mer Swarthmore folk dancer, acknowledges that the campus studiosare already used to capacity. He thinks the real problem is not aclash of interests between academic and nonacademic dancing butinstead that the campus lacks an adequate amount of suitable dancespace.

“The best solution would be to make some space available fornon–dance-program activity,” Williams says. Such an area, heexplains, could be used for folk, swing, and ballroom dances as wellas for aerobics classes. Because the all-campus space already avail-able in Clothier Hall is frequently scheduled for parties, dances, andlarge events, it is an unreliable venue for a regular weekly or twice-weekly class.

“It seems a shame that a program so vital to Swarthmore can’thave a space on campus with a wooden floor,” says Terry Harvey,who teaches club classes in Scottish country dance. “I don’t see folkdance stopping, but I’m worried about having moved off campus.It’s a big psychological change to no longer be in College space. Iwould rather have the College embrace folk dance and find a loca-tion for it.”

Despite its move, the folk dance club is functioning as always,with 20 to 30 students enrolling in the classes each semester.

Other members of the community—faculty and staff, alumni, andSwarthmore residents—are also welcome. Though a wide variety offorms (including Balkan, international, Morris, highland, rapper,and English long sword) have been taught at Swarthmore in thepast, the club currently focuses mainly on English and Scottishcountry dancing. All-campus contra dances are also held a couple oftimes a year, and workshops in a variety of other dance styles aretypically offered a few times a year.

The club’s biggest event, the annual English-Scottish Ball, is heldin Clothier Hall around Valentine’s Day each year. Geoffrey Selling’71, founder of the event, said the English-Scottish Ball is a student-run dance that generally attracts between 30 and 40 alumni fromacross the country each year (see sidebar).

Eileen Thorsos ’03, folk dance co-president with Easter andanother four-year dancer, remembers what brought her to the clubin the first place. Although she had studied ballet and tap in ele-mentary school, Thorsos had simply refused to dance for a long timeafter that. “I hardly ever exercised,” she says. “I was more comfort-able reading or doing some other intellectual thing. Dancing when Iwas around other people was even more risky.” Yet, in fall of herfreshman year, she decided to attend an all-campus contra dance. Incontra, a New England style of folk dance, partners join hands witha long group of couples and, listening to the instructions of thecaller, execute a series of patterns. Like all folk dancing, it’s an inher-ently social dance, accessible to beginners and advanced studentsalike.

“I loved it,” says Thorsos. “In part, I think I was hug-deprived. Iwas used to getting hugs from my mother every day; then, I came tocollege, and there were all these people I couldn’t touch.” From thatpoint on, she was hooked. She started doing not only English andScottish country dancing but also Argentine tango, swing, and fla-menco—all during her first semester at Swarthmore. “There’s thishappy, warm, relaxed, sweaty feeling you get after dancing,” Thorsossays, “like an endorphin high.”

The dancing itself is about patterns of skipping and steppingand shifting and waltzing and circling. It’s about bowing at thebeginning and end of each dance, synchronizing the body to themusic, and joining together to create the intricate patterns thatbecome the dance. “It’s kind of like that whole Jane Austen remakemovie. The live music really adds to that. You could just see Mr.Knightly changing positions,” says Aviva Aron-Dine ’05, a first-yearfolk dancer.

Folk dancing at Swarthmore is a melting pot of the old-fashionedand the modern. Students generally dress down for classes—

jeans or sweatpants, though some women wear skirts—and onlydon formal wear for the English-Scottish Ball. Still, as the dancersline up, with uneven numbers of men and women often requiringtemporary shifts in traditional gender roles, thoughts about whateveryone is wearing fall away.

WEEKLY FOLK-DANCE CLASSES ARE NOW HELD AT THE SWARTHMORE COMMU-

NITY CENTER. THE SPACE IS NOT IDEAL, BUT ENTHUSIASM FOR THE EXTRA-

CURRICULAR ACTIVITY REMAINS HIGH. STUDENTS PRACTICE “LEFTS AND

RIGHTS” (TOP LEFT); SIKANDRA CHRISTIAN ’06 CROSSES HANDS WITH HER

PARTNER (TOP RIGHT); AND INSTRUCTOR TERRY HARVEY TWIRLS ELIZABETH

MCDONALD ’05 (RIGHT) AT A TUESDAY NIGHT CLASS IN JANUARY.

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2003

“There’s thishappy, warm,

relaxed, sweatyfeeling youget after

dancing—like an

endorphin high.”

The dancers bow and grab hands, arms held firmly and fixedly,eye contact maintained. Then they skip, or shift, or “step change,”or “strathspey,” or “pas de basque” in Scottish class. On Englishnights, they start a stately lilting walk.

As Jenny Beer, Swarthmore’s English country dance instructor,explains, English folk dance has “minimal footwork—if you canwalk, you can dance.” In both dances, though, once the musicbegins, the patterns made are what matters. From overhead, thedance should look like an intricate secret, an intangible entityimpossible to separate into individual components. Yet for those

who smile and bow and curtsy at its conclusion, it’s a secret towhich every one of them is privy.

In fact, it is the dance’s accessibility that students, faculty, andalumni alike praise repeatedly. “Folk dance covers territory that isalso covered by the sports teams or the performance dance classes.But very little about it is competitive, and the emphasis is not onperformance,” explains Sibelan Forrester, associate professor ofRussian and folk dance faculty liaison. “Particularly for someonewho’s kind of shy or doesn’t have a lot of physical confidence com-ing out of high school, folk dance can be a great way to participatein physical activity.”

“For me, there’s a joy in movement in folk dancing that I haven’tfound in some of the other dance movements I’ve tried,” says East-er ’03. Like Thorsos, Easter also “had this great fear of dancing allthrough high school. I didn’t want to go folk dancing because I wassure I wouldn’t be good at it. But my friends dragged me there, Iprotested mightily, and here I am now.”

Also a bagpiper on the Canadian Circuit in Ontario, Easter saysthe live music available at every Swarthmore folk dance class “hasgotten me into some of the music I now play.” Yet, it is mostly thesocial aspect of the dance that brings himback week after week—the guarantee that hewill see his friends and have a good time.The dance community, Easter stresses, isaccessible and open, based on ideals of trustand cooperation that give the dance mean-ing. “The dance doesn’t go if everyone does-n’t work as a team. And that can bring thewonderful sense of being part of somethinglarger.”

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From overhead,the dance

should look likean intricate secret—an intangible entity

impossible toseparate

into individualcomponents.

ACCORDING TO ONE LONGTIME MUSICIAN, THIS YEAR’S ENGLISH-SCOTTISH

BALL (ABOVE) DREW THE LARGEST STUDENT TURNOUT IN MANY YEARS. IN

ALL, MORE THAN 125 ALUMNI, STUDENTS, AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS

DANCED. JOANNA REINER, AN INSTRUCTOR, TIED ON HER SLIPPERS FOR THE

EVENING (TOP RIGHT) WHILE DON CHEETHAM ’73 VISITED WITH DAUGHTER

LAURA IN THE CHILD-CARE AREA (BOTTOM RIGHT). CHEETHAM MET LAURA’S

MOTHER, MELISSA SHANER ’93, AT A SWARTHMORE FOLK DANCE.

The class is winding down. I’m more tiredthan expected; this last dance seems so

much harder than the first. I wipe my handacross my forehead and am surprised to findit just a bit damp. But as I line up to facemy partner—a different one this time—Iremember that they’re all counting on me.“Be careful of the pole,” someone says.Columns are arrayed on the sides of thedance floor at the Community Club—a sur-mountable obstacle, I think. “If we were inthe LPAC...,” I hear. It’s almost funny, apolitical statement in an apolitical setting.

The music swells. I rise on my toes,almost automatically now, and reach for mypartner’s hand. My arms are more fixed thanearlier, though certainly far from perfect. Itake a deep breath; look into his eyes; andstep off, circling around him in a skippingstep. This step—and my partner’s—is wherethe dance begins again. T

Elizabeth Redden ’05 is a McCabe Scholarfrom Lewes, Del.

N O T J U S T A N

A C T I V I T Y B U T A

W A Y O F L I F E

Perhaps more than any other

campus activity, folk dance

has a remarkable history of keep-

ing its members in close contact

with one another long after

Commencement. Years after leav-

ing the College, many alumni

still count folk dancing as a

major factor in their lives.

“There are a whole lot of

activities at Swarthmore that

people get involved in—politi-

cal, community service, and

tutoring. Inevitably, each activi-

ty touches certain lives. I think

it’s extraordinary that a program

like this can keep people togeth-

er so many years later. Dancing

becomes a permanent part of

people’s lives,” says Geoffrey

Selling ’71.

An elementary school science

teacher, Selling is also a certi-

fied Scottish country dance

instructor, an active member of

the Delaware Valley branch of

the Royal Scottish Country Dance

Society, and husband of Cecily

Roberts Selling ’77—one of many

folk-dance romance stories.

Dancing, he says, has kept him

in close contact with the Col-

lege. “I’m 53. and my daughters

are in college [including Sarah

Kate Selling ’03], but I’ve still

known dancers in every Swarth-

more class.”

“Folk dancing has been a

really important part of Swarth-

more for many of us,” Cecily Sell-

ing adds. “Our main contact

[with] the College is through

dancing.”

Some folk-dance alumni

select their locale, their friends,

even their spouses through or as

a result of their folk-dancing

connections. Andrew Peterson

’93 met his wife, then a Univer-

sity of Delaware student, at a

Scottish dance class in 1989. “I

remember being bowled over by

her then, and I still am now,” he

says. The couple return to the

College once or twice each year

for dances, always enjoying the

company of old friends they’ve

kept close. “The friendships I

made with dancers in the area

have proven some of the most

enduring of my life,” Peterson

says.

Fran Poodry ’92 chose to stay

in the Philadelphia region after

graduating just so she could

maintain contact with the close

friends she has made through

dancing. Yet, even for some of

those far away, folk-dance roots

prove hard to forget. Kira “J.C.”

Goetschius ’00, a graduate stu-

dent at the University of Hawaii,

now dances regularly with the

Honolulu branch of the Royal

Scottish Country Dance Society.

She expects never to stop.

“I know that Scottish dance

will always be a part of my life,

and, as many will tell you, it’s

not just an activity, but a way of

life,” she says.

—E.R.

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2003

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2003

Harry Truman once said that the only thing new inthe world is the history you don’t know. How didSwarthmore College become the outstanding exam-ple of small, private liberal arts colleges in the coun-try? How did it become so distinctive? Why is it so

admired by many in higher education?In my experience, every college or university of true distinction

has, somewhere in its past, a defining president. Harvard hadCharles Eliot. Columbia had Nicholas Butler. Chicago had RobertHutchins. It is clear to me that for Swarthmore College, that presi-dent is Frank Aydelotte, who served from 1921 to 1940.

Aydelotte was a fascinating man of unusual substance, exempla-ry character, complex personality, and amazing energy. Although hewas not a Quaker when hecame to the presidency, hisinfluence rivals that of theQuaker founders. His ideascontinue to resonate. His pro-grams and emphases haveremained intact for 60 yearsthrough the administrations ofsix successors.

Although he never wrote anautobiography, there are manygood sources of informationabout Aydelotte and his presi-dency. Two books stand out.The first, An Adventure in Edu-cation: Swarthmore College Under Frank Aydelotte, is a collection ofunsigned essays written by “the faculty.” It was published the yearafter he left office—an unabashed tribute to an admired leader. Thedefinitive biography is Frances Blanshard’s Frank Aydelotte ofSwarthmore for which the author, a former dean of women and wifeof Professor of Philosophy Brand Blanshard, had access to Ayde-lotte’s papers and conducted many personal interviews. From theseand other sources (a complete list of sources is on the BulletinWebsite: www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/mar03.html), I’ve drawn severalconclusions about President Aydelotte.

One explanation for his impact is the length of his tenure ofalmost 20 years. Changing a college takes time; it’s like turn-

ing a great ship onto another course. It happens slowly. A presidentmust have a vision and the skills to lead effectively, but this processalso takes time.Most defining presidents were in office a good while.

Still, Aydelotte did not by any means inherit a blank page. Hecame to a school where many had labored mightily and accom-plished much. College presidents are often prone to ignore or evendenigrate the work of their predecessors, but Aydelotte did not com-mit this error. Astute as a historian and modest about acceptingcredit for himself, he readily acknowledged the work of his Quakerpredecessors. He succeeded Joseph Swain, formerly president ofIndiana University and one of Aydelotte’s mentors.

Swain had come to Swarth-more in 1902 after success inIndiana on the condition thatthe Board of Managers wouldraise enough money to increasethe College’s endowment from$400,000 to $1 million. He con-solidated presidential (as distin-guished from Board) authorityand led the College away fromthe “guarded education” conceptof the 19th century. He built alibrary with the help of a grantfrom Andrew Carnegie and per-suaded the governor of Pennsyl-

vania, William Sproul, to build and endow the College’s observato-ry. Swain was more than a fund-raiser; according to Robert Brooks’1927 book, Reading for Honors at Swarthmore, he left a fertile fieldthat “Swarthmore presented to Aydelotte.” Standards had ad-vanced, students were working in small groups, the faculty wasexperimenting with new teaching methods. Indeed, when Aydelottearrived in 1921, he inherited a strong foundation on which to buildhis distinctive college.

Aydelotte’s biography is also illuminating. Reared in small-townIndiana, he borrowed the money from his father for his education

Aydelotte transformedSwarthmore from an

acceptable Quaker college oflocal reputation to

a truly outstanding institutionof national renown.

F r a n k A y d e l o t t eA r c h i t e c t o f D i s t i n c t i o n

!

A L O O K A T S W A R T H M O R E ’ S D E F I N I N G P R E S I D E N T

By Dan West I l lust rat ions by Nancy Harr ison

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at Indiana University. He majored in English, joined Sigma Nu fra-ternity, earned a varsity letter in football, and graduated Phi BetaKappa in 1911.

It is an insight into his character that Aydelotte developed withcertain handicaps. He had large and protruding ears, which Blan-chard says, “perhaps prevented his becoming vain." As a child, hestammered but, while still young, he managed to control it. Also as achild he injured his arm, and it was later discovered to have setbadly. It was rebroken and reset but never healed properly. Heundertook years of exercising his elbow, determined not to give upuntil he could play sports like other boys. Perhaps his passion forsports was the result. As an adult, he was forced to shake handswith his left. It was a discomfort he chose to ignore.

His selection to the Swarthmore presidency occurred within 10years of his graduation from Indiana. First, he became a professor inEnglish in a teacher’s college in California, Pa., then taught Englishand coached football (successful-ly in both endeavors) at Vin-cennes University and LouisvilleMale High School in Kentucky.He was one of the first RhodesScholars, studying at BrasenoseCollege, Oxford. Returning fromEngland, he was a faculty mem-ber at Indiana and later at theMassachusetts Institute ofTechnology.

Once at Swarthmore, Ayde-lotte was successful in all of the ways by means of which we

usually measure a president. Enrollment grew from 510 to 678, thefaculty increased from 41 to 83, and annual financial aid rose from$16,000 and 96 recipients to $75,000 and 281 recipients. Theendowment grew from $2.8 million to $7.7 million. Expenditures perstudent increased from $934 to $1,341. During his tenure, severalbuildings were completed, including Bond and the lodges, severalfaculty homes, the Biddle Memorial wing of the library, the ClothierMemorial, the Lamb-Miller Field House, the Martin Building andAnimal Laboratory, and Worth Hall. A campaign launched in 1929for $2 million raised more than $4 million, much of it after thestock-market crash and the onset of the Great Depression.

Of greater importance, however, were Aydelotte’s ideas. His edu-cational philosophy and ability to implement it allowed Swarthmoreto grow from an acceptable Quaker college of local reputation to atruly outstanding institution of national renown.

Believing that education is an active, not a passive, process andthat the best and only true education is self-education, he proposedthe Honors Program. At a meeting of the local chapter of the Ameri-can Association of University Professors (AAUP), he outlined hisidea: a more challenging set of seminars for chosen students in theirlast two years. These students would receive no term grades orexams but instead would be tested by external examiners at the endof the senior year. For these advanced students, he abolished the lec-ture method of teaching.Moreover, the seminars would serve, inAydelotte’s phrase, “to educate the faculty.” The program grew from11 students in 1923 to 146 students in 1939. It became the College

signature and remains the centerpiece of Swarthmore’s curriculum.To critics who argued that honors was the “Oxfordization” of

Swarthmore, Aydelotte pointed out that students met in smallgroups with two faculty members, not a single tutor. Some com-plained it was undemocratic. He countered that it was a stimulantto the entire college—faculty and students alike—and that all facul-ty members taught in both honors and in course. Some said it wastoo expensive, so he raised more money to finance it, obtaining alarge grant from the Rockefeller-funded General Education Board,whose president, his friend Alexander Flexner, called the HonorsProgram “frankly an endeavor to spot and to develop excellence.”

For 17 years, the following statement about American education,written by Aydelotte, was printed in the College’s catalog:

[America is] educating more students to a fair average thanany country in the world, but we are wastefully allowing the

capacity of the average toprevent us from bringingthe best up to the stan-dards they could reach.Our most important taskat the present is to checkthe waste. The method ofdoing it seems clear: to giveto those students who arereally interested in theintellectual life harder andmore independent workthan could profitably be

given to those whose devotion to matters of the intellect isless keen, to demand of the former, in the course of theirfour years’ work, a standard of attainment for the A.B.degree distinctly higher than we require of them at present.

To accomplish this goal, Aydelotte needed faculty members whocould do two kinds of teaching (honors and course) as well asresearch. Blanshard says that when he found and hired them, hecoddled them.

Some may think that strong support of faculty is a recent devel-opment at Swarthmore, but it began with Swain, and it became thenorm with Aydelotte. Having an Honors Program meant greaterintensity and effort for faculty as well as students. As an experiencedteacher, Aydelotte knew well the toll on strength and resources ofsuch intensity and the subsequent need for replenishment. He set agoal for doubling both the time and money usually allowed forleaves of absence and sabbaticals. The endowment campaign of1929–1930 had this mission, eventually making it possible for facul-ty members to have one semester of leave every three to four years athalf-salary or one full year in every seven at full pay. He established afaculty travel expense fund to help them attend meetings of learnedsocieties. He initiated the tenure system at Swarthmore in 1924. Hebuilt a group of faculty homes, designed by a faculty member, AlfredBrooks. He once said, “In a very real sense of the word, the faculty isthe College.” During his tenure, he increased faculty salaries by 200percent. The faculty responded in kind. In 1933, the worst year of theDepression, the faculty presented the Board and administration

He said, “In a very real senseof the word, the faculty

is the College.” During histenure, he increased salaries

by 200 percent.

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2003

with a voluntary salary cut, the proceeds of which were to be usedfor scholarships for needy students.

Swarthmore’s small size is another legacy from its defining presi-dent. As a Rhodes Scholar, he was much impressed with the

English style of small colleges within a large university at Oxford.He may well have subscribed to the sentiment of John Corbin, whosaid at the close of the 19th century, “The function of the college isof greater importance to the nation than that of the university, andthe function of the secondary school is more vital than that ofeither.”

Aydelotte stood for the small college. In the face of repeatedattempts on the part of universities to lure him away, he stuck toSwarthmore. He was keen to limit its size. His annual reports to theBoard of Managers in the early 1920s called attention to raisingacademic standards by limiting enrollment. But this policy wasmore than a strategy to raise standards. It was an integral part of hisphilosophy of education. He wrote, “Any student who is goodenough to be admitted to the college can hope for a place uniquelyhis own … he is an actor in it, not a spectator; and the difference isgreat.” According to Frances Blanshard, “The only increases hehoped to see at Swarthmore were in the number of teachers, the sizeof their salaries, and the volumes in the library.”

He also embraced Quaker values. The College was founded by

liberal Quakers (the Hicksites), and Aydelotte was drawn to—anddrew on—their values of individual freedom and collective improve-ment. Swarthmore had been nondenominational since 1909, butthe all-Quaker Board of Managers impressed him, and he believedthat the College was out of the ordinary—more solidly founded oncharacter.

His style of leadership and his understanding of governance alsoset the tone. He thought of himself as a facilitator. He was a presi-dent who adhered to the faculty viewpoint and who often said, “Theadministration exists to save the faculty’s time.” His managementstyle was to talk issues through, shape plans communally, and formconsensus slowly. He had many one-on-one conversations. To facili-tate this, he located his office on the ground floor of Parrish Hall,close to the dining room (now the Admissions Office). He likedwhat he perceived to be the flexibility of the Quakers. He loved theirphrase, “Proceed as the way opens.” His idea of holding meetingswas to simulate a Quaker meeting by discussing every significantproblem from every viewpoint and by involving everyone concerned.He saw the Board, the faculty, and the administration acting as oneunit.

A consequence was what Frances Blanshard calls “the unobtru-sive character of his administration.” He would usually begin theintroduction of a new idea by asking for advice from his interlocu-tor. Later, he would offer his adviser a list of possibilities—the most

controversial of them last—and insist that no conclusion bereached at that moment. His style of leadership caused facultymembers to think of Swarthmore as a “remarkably unified college.”

An example was the implementation of the Honors Program—at once Aydelotte’s greatest legacy and one of his most controversialinitiatives. After describing his idea in a talk to the AAUP duringhis first year in office, he urged discussion of it. He then appointeda committee to study it. Two faculty members, Robert Brooks inpolitical science and Jesse Holmes in philosophy, became so enthu-siastic that they couldn’t wait and experimented with the new peda-gogy in fall 1922, with 11 students. So successful were these firsttwo seminars that more were formed the following year, and theprogram grew. There was never a formal vote of the faculty or theBoard. Honors at Swarthmore just evolved.

It was never easy, however. One serious challenge to the HonorsProgram came at the meeting of the Board of Managers in Decem-ber 1927. Had it not been for the strong support of three olderQuaker women—Lucy Biddle Lewis, Emma Bancroft, and CarolineHallowell Worth—we might not have an Honors Program today.They were part of an ad hoc Board committee to “investigate thenew program.” They staunchly supported it and carried the day.Honors and other ideas endured and prospered.

Frank Aydelotte’s legacy includes other facets: an emphasis onresearch, a social life that is more egalitarian than at most col-

leges, the insistence on a strong library, and the introduction ofscholarships with which to attract talented students.

Then, as now, debate occurred about the type of student who

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should be admitted. In 1925, after the General Education Boardmade a five-year grant of $240,000 to solidify the Honors Programand help the College recruit outstanding students for it, not every-one at the College was exuberant. A letter to the editor of ThePhoenix deplored the effect this grant would have on the College’sadmission policy:

Eliminating most of the red-blooded men and women …substituting that vile species designated as “GreasyGrinds” for the robust, virile type that has made Swarth-more glorious in the past … Let other colleges, foundedwith specialized intellectual aims project them in thisenlarged Honors plan, but there is no excuse for sacrificingSwarthmore’s established pre-eminence in the field of pro-ducing well-rounded men and women for the sake ofattempting an alien andundesirable success in cul-tivating mental geniuses.

Aydelotte’s role in definingSwarthmore’s approach tocollege athletics is the finalillustration of how he shapedthe College so permanently.When he arrived at the Col-lege in 1920, the AlumniAssociation essentially ownedand ran the Athletics Pro-gram. Alumni scheduled thegames, hired the coaches, collected the gate receipts, and recruitedmen to play football, providing scholarships and subsidies. Thisapproach and Aydelotte’s educational philosophy were headed forinevitable conflict. He believed that the chief source of corruptionin American sports was the spectators, intent on victory at anyprice.

He was an advocate of the Oxford University attitude towardsports. In an essay for the Oxford Stamp, he deplored spectator sportsas opposed to participation in sports. At Oxford, almost everyoneplayed a sport, but few watched others play.

In a Collection speech at Swarthmore, he said that his ambitionfor the school was for every student to play a game and for many toplay well enough to represent the school on a team. But he hadaccepted the presidency on the condition that financial subsidies toathletes be eliminated. In 1932, Aydelotte finally assumed directresponsibility for the Athletics Program, financing it entirely withCollege funds and giving faculty standing to physical educationstaff and coaches. Athletics became a college program, part of a stu-dent’s educational experience—clearly second in importance, alongwith everything else, to the academic endeavor.

Controversy continued for several years. President of the Alum-ni Association William Tomlinson ’17 led the opposition. At a meet-ing of the Board of Managers in February 1935, he presented hisviews in a speech he called “Men Wanted.” He stated that he andothers feared that Swarthmore’s admissions policy was not consid-ering the “broader qualities of manhood,” that “the purely academ-ic functions … are crowding out those vital activities that have to

do with the development of ruggedness, courage, determination,and better human understanding.” Tomlinson deplored what hecalled a lack of communication between the administration and thealumni. President of the Board Charles Jenkins defended Aydelotteand proposed a joint committee of Board members and AlumniCouncil members to “canvass the situation.”

Aydelotte’s ideas took root and flourished. They were carefullynourished by generations of administrators, Board members,

faculty members, and students. Indeed, one scholar, Burton Clark,points to several important reasons why his programs and policiesendured at Swarthmore while such did not occur at other once-distinctive colleges: the force and validity of the ideas, the way theywere introduced and implemented, the initial and continuing sup-port of faculty, the length of his tenure, and outside financial sup-

port all played a role.So did the persons who suc-

ceeded him. Both John Nasonand Courtney Smith wereintellectual protégés of Ayde-lotte. Like Aydelotte, both hadserved as secretary of theRhodes Scholar Program inthe United States. Both hadbeen developed as facultymembers, and both hadbecome small-college liberalarts advocates.I visited President John

Nason on a couple of occasions before his death in 2001. Duringone visit, he told me (too modestly) that his greatest contributionsto Swarthmore in his 11 years as president had been, on the onehand, to calm the place down after years of controversy underAydelotte and, on the other, to prevent the reversal of any of Ayde-lotte’s policies and programs. It is significant that in the 60 yearssince Aydelotte left Swarthmore’s helm to head the Institute forAdvanced Study at Princeton, Board members, presidents, and fac-ulty members have all protected, preserved, and advocated thoseformative ideas and programs that help make Swarthmore what itis today.

Frances Blanshard called Aydelotte a “thoroughgoing intellectu-al” who made Swarthmore “the endeavor of his life” and left itarguably the most admired small college in the country. The poli-cies that were instituted while he was president, the priorities thatwere established, the values that were set, the ways we teach andlearn and recruit and play sports and govern ourselves, the way wetreat and support each other—indeed, the way we think about our-selves as an institution—are largely to be traced back to thisremarkable man whose central idea was to develop leaders for oursociety and our world.T

Dan West is vice president for alumni, development, and public relations.He holds doctorates in theology (Vanderbilt University, 1969) and educa-tional administration (Harvard University, 1984). During his 34-yearcareer in higher education, he has served at five small liberal arts colleges.He was president of two of these.

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His Honors Program becamethe College signature

and remains the centerpiece ofSwarthmore’s curriculum.

November’s midterm elections were disastrous for Demo-crats. But even the darkest days have their bright spots—and one of those for Democrats was Christopher Van

Hollen, who was one of only two Democratic challengers to defeat aHouse Republican incumbent. Now that Van Hollen is in office, rep-resenting Maryland’s 8th Congressional District, he’s experiencingthe midterm election’s fallout firsthand—as he tries to figure outhow, as a freshman member of the minority, he can make headwayon the issues on which he campaigned.

“What’s supposed to be one of the greatest democratic institu-tions is actually very undemocratic in the sense that the majority canuse the rules to prohibit the minority from offering up alternatives,”Van Hollen explained one January afternoon in his House office.“I’m not talking about losing the vote. I’m talking about the oppor-tunity to have an up-or-down vote on your alternative proposal.They can bring a bill to the floor under a rule that says only Republi-can amendments are in order.” So, although Van Hollen may haverun for office with visions of repealing parts of President Bush’s $1.4trillion tax cut and passing stricter gun control laws, he now realizesthat much of his job will consist of simply trying to fend off Repub-lican proposals.

One of his first orders of business, he says, will be dealing withPresident Bush’s call for $670 million more in tax cuts. “It’s onlyputting additional money in the pockets of people who need it theleast, and it’s not going to help the economy,” Van Hollen com-plained. “The rhetoric of helping working people is almostOrwellian.”

Van Hollen’s rhetoric might be sharp, but he thinks it’s necessary.Indeed, Van Hollen blames the Democrats’ midterm debacle, inpart, on the party’s reluctance to stand up to President Bush. “Ithink a lot of Democrats got cowed by the Bush administration on awhole range of issues and tried to be, in some cases, Republicanlite,” he says. “When you say, ‘I agree with the Bush administrationon a lot of things,’ and then the president comes to your district andsays, ‘Well, that’s great, but I’m supporting the other guy because heagrees with me more,’ your message isn’t going to get across.”

Still, Van Hollen says he will look for common ground where hecan find it. “The opportunities to build coalitions are going to beissue dependent,” he says. “Gun control is probably an issue fornow on which it’s going to be very tough to put together a coalition.But there may be other issues, like working on child abuse and neg-lect—that’s something I worked on in the state legislature and that[House Majority Leader] Tom DeLay has worked on, too.Maybe wecan make some progress on that. Working on mental health issuesor disabilities issues—at least in the state legislature—we werealways able to build bipartisan coalitions.”

The son of a Foreign Service officer, 44-year-old Van Hollenspent much of his childhood abroad, so that by the time he arrivedat Swarthmore in 1977, he already had a healthy interest in foreign

affairs and public policy. Van Hollen initially majored in history,then switched to physics, and eventually settled on philosophy, writ-ing his senior thesis on Wittgenstein. “I’m sure if I looked at thepaper today, I wouldn’t understand a word I wrote,” he jokes. Awayfrom the classroom, Van Hollen pursued his political interests moredirectly: He was a member of the Swarthmore Anti-Apartheid Com-mittee, which advocated that the College divest from companiesdoing business in South Africa; and he was active in an organizationcalled the Nuclear Weapons Education Project, an education groupinterested in arms control efforts such as the Strategic Arms Limita-tion Treaty. Then Swarthmore Physics Professor and now New Jer-sey Congressman Rush Holt was involved in the group.

After his junior year, Van Hollen decided to take some time offfrom school, and, along with several classmates, he went toGuatemala. “We drove all the way from Washington, D.C.,” herecalls, “in a beat-up old Toyota with old floorboards; every time wewent over a puddle, our feet would get wet.” After a few months inGuatemala, Van Hollen rounded out his own personal study-abroadprogram by traveling around South Asia before returning to Swarth-more in fall 1982 for his senior year.

After graduation, Van Hollen enrolled in the two-year master’s inPublic Policy Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government(where he met his wife, Katherine, with whom he has three chil-dren). From Cambridge, he went to Washington to work on CapitolHill for Maryland Senator Charles Mathias. He handled arms con-trol and foreign policy issues for Mathias; when the senator—a lib-eral Republican—retired from politics in 1986, Van Hollen joinedthe Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He began attending law school at night at Georgetown Universi-ty. In 1990—with the ink barely dry on his law degree—Van Hollenmade the move from political staffer to actual politician, running forand winning a seat in Maryland’s House of Delegates, where he rep-resented the Washington suburb of Montgomery County.

Four years later, he won a seat in the Maryland Senate. In An-napolis, Van Hollen built a reputation as a liberal but pragmaticpolitician, proving effective at building coalitions on issues likeschool funding, gun control, and protecting the Chesapeake Bay. Tomany in the Maryland Capitol, it was clear Van Hollen was markedfor bigger things; after a second term in the State Senate, he set hissights on the U.S. House.

Despite his impressive legislative record in Annapolis, VanHollen entered the 2002 congressional campaign a decided

underdog. His first challenge came in the Democratic primary,where he faced one of his Maryland General Assembly colleagues,Mark Shriver, son of Peace Corps founder Sargent Shriver.

“There’s no doubt that everyone in the Washington politicalestablishment—the Democrats on the Hill, the political consult-ants, all the insiders—saw [me] as the underdog,” says Van Hollen.

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I D o S o l e m n l y S w e a rC H R I S T O P H E R V A N H O L L E N J R . ’ 8 3 — O N E O F T W O D E M O C R A T S T O U N S E A T A R E P U B L I C A NI N T H E H O U S E I N N O V E M B E R ’ S E L E C T I O N — H A S H I S W O R K C U T O U T F O R H I M .

By Jason Zenger le ’96

MARCH

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27

Although Van Hollen may not have been the favorite son of thepolitical establishment, he was no slouch where it counted most, inhis district. He was well known there from 12 years of legislativework in Annapolis and capitalized on that to score a narrow victoryover Shriver in September’s primary.

But Van Hollen wasn’t able to rest on his laurels because his nextorder of business was squaring off against an even more formidableopponent, the eight-term Republican Congresswoman ConstanceMorella.

Fortunately for Van Hollen, he had some help. Although Morellawas still popular in a district where her generally liberal voting

record endeared her to predominately left-leaning voters, her partyaffiliation had become a burden. Democrats sensed that she wasvulnerable, and the national Party put its weight behind Van Hollen,helping him with fund-raising and sending out big names like thenMinority Leader Richard Gephardt and New York Senator HillaryClinton to campaign with him.

The result was a heated—and sometimes bizarre—campaign.Van Hollen mostly refrained from attacking Morella head on but sel-dom missed an opportunity to portray the race as a contest betweenthe Democratic and Republican parties. “When President Clintonwas in office, there was always a safety net; if anything really bad gotout of the Congress, there was his veto pen,” Van Hollen explains.“Under Bush, it’s the opposite; so we focused a lot on the fact thatthe first vote Representative Morella cast each Congress was for theRepublican leadership.”

Morella, meanwhile, obfuscated on the party question: “ConnieMorella doesn’t represent a political party, she represents us,” onecampaign mailing stated (never mind that the mailing was paid forby the National Republican Congressional Committee). But she

couldn’t obfuscate enough. On election day, Van Hollen won 52 per-cent of the vote.

Although Swarthmore alumni made up only a small portion ofthose voting for Van Hollen, they played a disproportionately largerole in his campaign. Early in the campaign, Greg ’65 and Lee SmithIngram ’66 contacted 15 other Washington-area Swarthmore alum-ni and asked them to help organize a fund-raiser. “We had a prelim-inary meeting, and we all agreed that we would reach out to all thepeople we knew,” recalls Lois Stoner ’44. “I helped get people fromthe 1940s classes.” Michelle Pokomy Parker ’90 and Kathy Stevens’89 hosted another Van Hollen fund-raiser a few months later. Sev-eral Washington-area alumni helped Van Hollen’s campaign in otherways.

“He established a corps of volunteers who were dedicated to himand who had the kind of enthusiasm you cannot buy in politics,”says Frank Sieverts ’55. Says Van Hollen: “The Swarthmore contin-gent in the area was terrific. . . . As the campaign went on, it justseemed like everyone was from Swarthmore.”

In fact, Van Hollen’s life as a House freshman hasn’t been thatdifferent from the life of a college freshman.When I visited him inhis office in early January, the congressman was in the midst ofunpacking boxes, hanging pictures, and getting a tutorial from astaffer about how to buy lunch with a congressional debit card.

Then, there was the task of putting names to all the new faces—a task that’s particularly important for Van Hollen since he’s discov-ered that, thanks to his race’s high profile and the fact that itoccurred in Congress’s backyard, he’s not a typical freshman. “Everymember of Congress, whether they represent Hawaii, California, orFlorida, they were here, and whenever they turned on their TV sets,they saw this race, or whenever they picked up The Washington Post,they read about it,” Van Hollen says. “There are advantages to thatin that a lot of people know who I am coming in here. So my task isto quickly get to know who all the others are.”T

Jason Zengerle is an associate editor of The New Republic.

©2003THEWASHING

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IN JANUARY, CONGRESSMAN CHRISTOPHER VAN HOLLEN (CENTER) WAS

SWORN IN AS REPRESENTATIVE OF MARYLAND’S 8TH DISTRICT. TO HIS RIGHT

ARE DAUGHTER ANNA, 12, AND SON NICHOLAS, 11.

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T H E L I V E S O F S I X S W A R T H M O R E A N ST E L L T H E T A L E O F A G R E A T C O L L E G E .

By Rick Bader

DAVIDWOO

LWAY

One of the best ways to get at the essenceof Swarthmore is to look at its people. Theways that they learn, the work that theydo, and the lives that they lead offerinsight into the habits of mind and values

that spring from Swarthmore. On thefollowing pages, you will meet six youngstudents and alumni whose actions inthe world reveal the educational commonground that all Swarthmoreans share.

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Eternal StudentFor as long as he can remember, Jacob Krich ’00has wanted to know more about the way things—all kinds of things—work. So he’s spending alifetime finding out.

When Jacob Krich set out some eight years ago to write theessay for his Swarthmore application, he wrote aboutwhat he thought would be the ideal college experience.

He wrote that he would like to sit down with a college course cata-log and work his way through it from beginning to end, fromanthropology to zoology, stopping only when he had studiedabsolutely everything the college had to offer. He wrote that in hisperfect world, he would be a student all his life.

When Krich finally sat down with the Swarthmore catalog andlearned that curriculum realities would require some narrowing, heset to work paring his list of possible majors to a manageable 20 orso; then, during his freshman and sophomore years, he explored asmany of those as he possibly could.When it finally came time todecide on a major, physics seemed the logical choice. Why? Because,he says, “When you ask a physicist why, he doesn’t refer you toanother discipline.”

To do physics justice would mean doing it as closely as possibleto the way physicists do it, and this meant participating in theHonors Program, a long-standing Swarthmore tradition thatencourages learning at the highest possible level. The program,which was revamped in the mid-1990s, has three signature charac-teristics. One, honors candidates take part in intense seminarsdesigned to foster both collaboration and a high degree of inde-pendent thinking. Two, students are required to do a thesis. Andthree, the award of honors is conferred not by the College itselfbut by a panel of expert external examiners. What made the biggestdifference for Krich was the thesis. “The thesis terrified me,” hesays. “It’s the closest model of what practicing scientists do, andit terrified me. But I wanted to lock myself into something thatmade me do it. It was possibly the most rewarding thing I did atSwarthmore.”

Krich’s work focused on substances called liquid crystals, whichare molecules that exist in a state somewhere between a liquid and asolid and that are being used in everything from high-tech opticaldisplays to laser devices. The liquid crystals he was interested inmove around while still approximating the shape of a helix. A fullrotation through that helix is called the pitch. In some cases, as thetemperature increases, the helix completely unwraps and inverts,wrapping itself the opposite direction. Krich’s hypothesis was thatany liquid crystal could be made to invert if it could be heated

enough without causing it to melt. Unfortunately, he notes, “itdidn’t happen.”

So, with time running out on his summer of thesis research, heswitched to a side project that looked at the phase transition thatoccurs as the temperature of a liquid is lowered to the point justbefore it becomes a liquid crystal. He studied tiny pockets of liquid-crystal–like substances that appeared at temperatures too hot for anactual liquid crystal and set out to make the very difficult measure-ment of the pitch of these “pretransitional fluctuations.” The suc-cess of this project allowed Krich to test a widely used theory. Thetheory, Krich found, was wrong; his work to reach this conclusionearned him the American Physical Society’s Apker Award, givenannually for the best undergraduate physics thesis.

“Jacob is the best model for a modern scholar I can think of,”says his friend and thesis adviser Swarthmore Professor of PhysicsPeter Collings. “He enjoys the life of the mind without being overlyprofessorial. He has this impressive intellect, but it’s not an intimi-dating intellect. He won’t push people away—he’ll draw them in.That’s where I think he’s special.”

Those qualities helped him win a Rhodes Scholarship. Now inhis third year at Oxford, he’s beginning to feel like he might achievethat goal of being an eternal student after all. After the Rhodes, he’slooking at five or six years in a doctoral program and then a fewyears at least as a postdoc. Then, a career in an academic environ-ment is almost certainly in order. But whether that career will be ata major research university, where Professor Collings says Jacobwould “make a real difference in our understanding of nature,” or ata place more like Swarthmore, where undergraduates would benefitenormously from his intellect and personality, remains to be seen.

Krich himself is putting off that decision for now. But a clue tohis eventual direction might be found in a story he likes to tellabout a hiking trip he took a few years ago in Costa Rica with hisfather and sister. They were standing at the top of a mountain on aclear day under a sky that was a sharp and brilliant blue, and thatgot Krich thinking about physics. “I remembered,” he recalls, “thatthe light from the blue sky is partially polarized, which you can seeparticularly well when you have a clear sky. I had polarized sunglass-es, which meant that if you looked at the sky and rotated them, thelight would grow darker and lighter. I showed this to my sister, andI got the response that every teacher always dreams of [hearing].She said, ‘That’s so cool!’”

RHODES SCHOLAR JACOB KRICH (LEFT) “IS THE BEST MODEL FOR A MODERN

SCHOLAR THAT I CAN THINK OF,” SAYS HIS MENTOR PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS

PETER COLLINGS. “HE WON’T PUSH PEOPLE AWAY—HE’LL DRAW THEM IN.

THAT’S WHERE I THINK HE’S SPECIAL.”

Precocious LeadershipA liberal arts education has preparedJeremy Peterson ’99 for high-level positionsat a remarkably young age.

Itwas spring 2001, and Jeremy Peterson, newly appointed atthe astonishing age of 24 as director of the New York CityParks Department’s Operations and Management Planning

(OMP) Division, was having a problem with the excess grass grow-ing between sidewalk cobblestones in Battery Park. Because Jeremywas having a problem with this, and the problem had been dulynoted in a report OMP had prepared, it was also a problem forManhattan Borough Commissioner Adrian Benepe. Petersonbelieved it was Benepe’s responsibility to keep the spaces betweenthe cobblestones grass free. Commissioner Benepe, many yearsolder and with many more years of experience than DirectorPeterson, was doing his best to discredit the report and its authorat a meeting of all the New York Borough commissioners.

“I was the chief bad guy,” Peterson recalls. “It was my job to kickpeoples’ butts. Commissioner Benepe pulled out the report in frontof all the top commissioners and said, ‘Look at this picture of grassbetween the stones. It’s not OMP’s job to deal with these small aes-thetic concerns.’ He had a valid point. But I also had a validpoint—these were the rules, and it was an offense.”

So Peterson stuck to his guns.When Commissioner Benepe waspromoted to commissioner of the entire City Parks Department nottoo long afterward, the OMP’s chief bad guy feared he might soonbecome a former chief bad guy.Much to his surprise, and relief,what Peterson got instead of the axe was respect; in his first speechto Parks staff, the new commissioner said keeping park ratings upwas his top priority, and he singled out Peterson for his tenacityand toughness.

Precocious leadership under pressure is nothing new toPeterson. His father is a biologist who studied wolves and mooseon Michigan’s Isle Royale, where family vacations consisted of col-lecting random body parts of decaying animals. Once, when theleader of a volunteer team assembled to support his father’sresearch got sick, Jeremy, who was all of 15 at the time, was recruit-ed to head the expedition, guiding a group of adults off trailthrough thickets as dense as suburban garden hedges in search ofdecaying moose. “My parents were very nervous,” he remembers.“They didn’t know if these people would come out alive or dead.”All survived, and he led four more trips before his freshman year atSwarthmore.

At Swarthmore, Jeremy integrated interests in the natural worldand human behavior into a major in bioanthropology, an interdis-ciplinary field that explores the evolutionary roots of human behav-ior. It was an education, he says, that did a good job of impartingpractical knowledge and instilling an ethic of purposefulness. “Thehard skills I gained in science classes were incredibly useful. Theyenabled me to digest problems, break them down, and look forsolutions.When I entered the workforce, I was better preparedthan others and able to advance rapidly. And Swarthmore imbuesstudents with a sense of responsibility, a sense that you have some

purpose in the world. You have this education, and these talents,and this knowledge, and you have this responsibility to use it all ina productive manner.”

One day after graduating, he moved to New York to start his jobwith OMP. He was at Parks a year and a half before being nameddirector, a job that was every bit as much about human behavior asit was about protecting natural environments. He is proudest ofputting in place a system to improve the performance of workers inthe agency’s skilled trade shops—blacksmiths, plumbers, carpen-ters, and other heavy-trade workers—people with high pay andhighly unionized jobs who had compiled a 1,000-order backlog ofwork orders. The biggest challenge, Peterson says, was creating anincentive for change. “The government is better at sticks than car-rots, and even the sticks aren’t that good. I mean, you can’t firethese people. But they took pride in their jobs. So we used the toolof competition.” Monthly performance goals were set for eachshop, and no shop wanted to face the embarrassment of being theonly one to fall short of its goal. In six months, the backlog wasgone.

For now, Peterson has left New York for Argentina, a countrystruggling through economic crisis and political upheaval, wherehe’s learning Spanish and working for the Buenos Aires Herald whilewaiting to hear if he’s been accepted to law school. He’s chroniclinghis experiences on a Web site, http://unglued.org, which hedescribes as a sort of modern-day travelogue. On one page, heruminates on a friend’s account of how people at the University ofBuenos Aires cheered when the second plane crashed into theWorld Trade Center. On another is a story about local protestmarchers angry about increased utility costs. And on yet another isan account of Peterson’s own frustrating experience with an unco-operative washing machine. You can bet he saw to it that the laun-dry eventually got done.

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“SWARTHMORE IMBUES STUDENTS WITH A SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY, A

SENSE THAT YOU HAVE SOME PURPOSE IN THE WORLD,” SAYS JEREMY

PETERSON. AT 24, HE DIRECTED OPERATIONS AND PLANNING FOR THE NEW

YORK CITY PARKS DEPARTMENT.

Change AgentThe service ethic is what drew Smitha Arekapudi ’99to Swarthmore, and it remains the dominant forceshaping her life and career.

Oneof the first qualities that struck Smitha Arekapudiabout Swarthmore when she was a high school student inChicago thumbing through the College’s catalog several

years ago was language that connected Swarthmore to its Quakerheritage. It was not so much the “Quakerness” itself that attractedher as the principles underlying it, values of simple living, generousgiving, and a commitment to a search for truth. “I felt,” she says,“that they were promoting the idea of seeking intellectual clarity.”And “there’s a general sense that you’re being prepared to be some-one who will be an active part of society,” she adds.

Being an active part of society was nothing new to Arekapudi.She attended high school at the University of Chicago LaboratorySchools, where she was an outstanding student and president ofthe school’s chapter of Amnesty International. Her activities in andout of the classroom made her an ideal candidate for admissioninto Swarthmore’s Lang Scholars Program. The program, createdthrough a gift from Eugene Lang ’38, offers financial and otherkinds of support to students who are committed to social justiceand have potential to become leaders in civic society.

Arekapudi’s civic engagements as a Swarthmore student, bothon and off campus, were many. She worked in Philadelphia for thePro Choice Task Force, which helped escort women seeking servicesat Planned Parenthood past an occasionally intimidating gauntletof antiabortion protestors. She served on the Swarthmore fresh-

man orientation committee and became co-president of the SouthAsian student organization, Deshi. She worked at the William PennHousing Community in Chester, Pa., with the Chester-SwarthmoreCommunity Coalition, helping to set up a women’s wellness center.She did a summer internship writing policy papers for the Healthand Medicine Policy Research Group in Chicago.

Sometimes, these activities were directly linked to her academicstudies. Her work in Chester, for example, was part of a politicalscience course she was taking called Public Service, CommunityOrganizing, and Social Change. Other times, the connections wereless explicit. “Sometimes, it’s hard to connect a community projectto the academic experience,” she says. “It can be a fundamentallydifferent experience. But your courses prepare you to be an educat-ed problem solver, whether in academics or in the real world. Somepeople say Swarthmore is about intellectual study supported byextracurricular programs.Maybe during certain experiences for meit was the other way around.”

Most Lang Scholars apply to do a special Lang Project, which isdesigned to meet a significant community need and is eligible for agrant of up to $10,000. For her project, Arekapudi helped launchan organization called the Illinois Public Health Advocate, whichsought to educate and mobilize people in Illinois who were inter-ested in public health issues. One of her first efforts was to organ-ize a round table on public health in DuPage County, Ill. “Weopened the dialogue and got an overwhelming response,”Arekapudi says. “Some came to talk about noise pollution atO’Hare Airport, which was a huge concern. Others asked about themeaning of public health and specific issues like contaminatedfood, contaminated swimming pools, and health care access.Others just came and said, ‘What can I do?’” The program’s successdrew national attention, and others modeled on it have since beendeveloped in several states.

Arekapudi’s next stop after graduating from Swarthmore withhonors in economics was the Harvard School of Public Health,where today she’s pursuing a doctorate. Her chief interests are can-cer prevention epidemiology and the effects of tobacco. After sheearns her doctorate, she plans to go to medical school. After that,she hopes to work in women’s health and preventive medicine,striking the right balance between teaching, research, and practice.

At every step along the way of her evolving life and career,Arekapudi says, she’s grateful for the influence of her Swarthmoreexperiences. “The Lang Program encouraged us to be leaders insocial and public service. Swarthmore gives you an academic foun-dation, but, importantly, you learn how to use that information topromote change and make a material difference in your community.You learn to think critically, observe well, speak articulately, andwrite persuasively, and also you learn to be an active citizen. There’sa sense that you’re being prepared to be someone who will be need-ed to take on an active and important role in the world. It’s theSwarthmore philosophy I’ve carried around this whole time.”

SMITHA AREKAPUDI IS EARNING A DOCTORATE AT THE HARVARD SCHOOL OF

PUBLIC HEALTH, CONCENTRATING ON CANCER PREVENTION AND THE EFFECTS

OF TOBACCO. AFTER THAT, SHE PLANS TO ATTEND MEDICAL SCHOOL. AT

SWARTHMORE, SHE SAYS, “YOU LEARN TO BE AN ACTIVE CITIZEN.”

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Mixing It UpIt’s the variety of experience that has madeSwarthmore work for junior Matthew Goldstein,who has excelled in the classroom and on thebaseball diamond.

AskMatthew Goldstein to list some of the highlights of hisSwarthmore years, and two come quickly to mind. One waswinning the College’s Dunn Trophy—awarded to the soph-

omore who contributes most to the Athletics Program—last spring.The second was a trip he took to Baltimore in fall 2002 as a Collegerepresentative to the national conference of the American Societyof Human Genetics. These two events put some fitting bookendson college experience and signify the importance of Swarthmore tohim.

Goldstein, a three-sport athlete in each of his four years atCrystal Springs Upland School in the San Francisco Bay Area,looked at Amherst and several Ivy League colleges, but he choseSwarthmore because he thought it gave him the best opportunity toexplore his various intellectual interests fully and participate inintercollegiate athletics. “Athletics are an important part of my life,”he says, “but not the most important.” What made Swarthmore soattractive is that it has the proper balance.

As a freshman, he played soccer and later went out for baseball,when a friend suggested he try out. As a southpaw pitcher with acurve, a change-up, and a wicked fastball that tails away from right-handed batters, he was a welcome addition to a team that wasstruggling. Part of that struggle, he says looking back, could beattributed to an Athletics Program that was spread too thin.

During his sophomore year, however, as Swarthmore’sIntercollegiate Athletics Program was in the midst of being restruc-

tured, he sensed that the perspective on athletics was beginning tochange. “This is an intellectual community,” he says, “and we’rehere first and foremost to get an education. But after the restructur-ing, the remaining Athletics Programs are receiving more resourcesand attention, which in turn is raising the quality of those pro-grams. As a result, the Swarthmore community is paying moreattention, and the athletes are feeling better about what they’redoing.”

With the change in focus came stepped-up recruiting efforts;now, up to 30 prospects a year are visiting to look at Swarthmoreand at its baseball program. The team members took matters intotheir own hands as well, holding meetings to decide among them-selves where baseball fell on their priority lists. All this has beenenormously rewarding, Goldstein says. “It’s a tremendous experi-ence—we’re excited about contributing to the development of thebaseball program.”

The turnaround is gradually playing itself out in the team’s per-formance. They improved from a dismal .200 season in Goldstein’sfreshman year to .384 in the Centennial Conference last year, witha young team loaded with sophomores and juniors. This spring,Goldstein thinks they have a realistic shot at a .500 record. “WhenI compare freshman year to where we are now,” he says, “the differ-ence is significant. There’s recognition that athletics are an impor-tant part of many students’ lives—and they can pursue the samehigh level of achievement in athletics as in academics.”

As an honors biology major with a history minor, Goldstein hasexperienced considerable success on the academic turf as well, andthat too has been fulfilling. “I’ve really come into my own in termsof finding my intellectual and academic passion,” he says. “I don’tthink I truly appreciated how much I love learning until I camehere. I’ve developed a keen interest in genetics, particularly in thearea of neurological diseases such as autism. This past summer,after taking a genetics seminar, I was fortunate to work with anautistic child as part of Cure Autism Now in the Bay Area. TheBaltimore conference gave me the opportunity to hear about thecutting-edge research on autism.” He noted that al-though much isknown about autism, there is great opportunity as the knowledgeand understanding about the disease is in its infancy.

As for what happens after Swarthmore, Goldstein has his sightsset on medical school and, after that, possible work in public healthpolicy, research, or international health in developing countries.Goals such as these, he notes, are very Swarthmorean: “There’s anenergy about Swarthmore. There’s something unique and differentabout how people approach their lives. There’s a sense of pur-pose—a sense that people have the ability to effect change andhave an impact on society.”

Of course, if a pro scout showed enough interest, he wouldn’t beopposed to putting off saving the world for a few years, at leastwhile his arm feels good.

“ATHLETICS ARE AN IMPORTANT PART OF MY LIFE,” SAYS MATTHEW

GOLDSTEIN, “BUT NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT. WHAT MADE SWARTHMORE SO

ATTRACTIVE IS THAT IT HAS THE PROPER BALANCE—AN EXCELLENT LIBERAL

ARTS PROGRAM COUPLED WITH A SOLID DIVISION III ATHLETICS PROGRAM

THAT DOESN’T OVEREMPHASIZE SPORTS.”

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Small WorldWhat do a young man from Kenya and a youngwoman from rural Nevada have in common?Swarthmore—and a desire to understand better thecomplexity of the world in which they live.

Most girls going to high school in Fernley, Nev., a smalltown about 30 miles east of Reno on I-80, give littlethought to leaving the state after graduating.

But Heather Weyrick ’01 wasn’t like most girls. And some of theliterature she got from one very distant college piqued her interest.“They described themselves as different and quirky,” Heatherrecalls of her first encounter with a certain liberal arts schoolsouthwest of Philadelphia. “Among the people I grew up with, Ireally was weird and quirky. But when I got to Swarthmore, thescale on which they defined weird and quirky was much differentfrom my own scale at that time.”

Swarthmore was an altogether foreign environment to her, evenif not quite as foreign as a place like, say, Africa might have been.

Melkizedeck Okudo ’03, on the other hand, knew Africa. Theyoung Kenyan had spent the first 18 years of his life in Nairobibefore coming to the United States to attend the United WorldCollege, whose two-year program of intense academics, wildernessexperiences, and community service attracts students from all overthe world to its New Mexico campus. It was there that he firstheard about Swarthmore. “I felt it was the kind of place where Iwanted to be,” he says. “Academic rigor was the No. 1 thing, theygave financial support to international students, and I could beinvolved in community service.”

Okudo came to Swarthmore to be part of the Lang ScholarProgram, which supports students who show exceptional promisein community service. To date, Okudo has been involved with twoservice-related projects. The summer after his freshman year, heworked in Kenya for a nongovernmental organization called Eco-News Africa, which monitors and reports on the impact of globalpolicy making on the economies of nations in sub-Saharan Africa.Last spring, for his Lang project, he organized a partnershipbetween a Chester, Pa., nonprofit and a group of Swarthmore stu-dents to promote computer education in Chester’s low-income,mostly black communities. The classes occurred during the sum-mer, while Okudo was in New York doing an internship withGoldman Sachs. He returned to his work in Chester last fall, andanother set of computer classes is about to begin.

Okudo enjoys the intellectual give-and-take of internationalconversations at Swarthmore—whether they center on Islamic fun-damentalism or the recent elections in Kenya—and appreciates theinterest of other students “to step out and find out about me.”

For Okudo, Swarthmore is an international experience. He, inturn—along with the 86 other international students on cam-pus—is something of an international experience for others hemeets. For Heather Weyrick, Swarthmore was the gateway to abroader world.

As a double major in theater and sociology/anthropology and aself-described child of pop culture,Weyrick became interested in

the ways presentation and performance become part of our publiclives. During a semester in Poland on a Swarthmore exchange pro-gram, she learned how theater has helped shape its national identi-ty, especially when the country was under communist rule, andways theater, much of it forced underground, helped the nationhang onto a Polish identity that stood in opposition to the “offi-cial” government identity. With the fall of communism, she says,theater took on an important role in rebuilding a nation. “The taskof theater was to create an image of what it means to be Polish.”

In today’s world, what it means to be educated increasinglyinvolves developing an understanding of other cultures andthe ways they shape our lives. For this reason, internationalexperiences are an increasingly important part of a Swarthmoreeducation.

Weyrick is now back in Poland on a Fulbright Fellowship, study-ing the role of Poland’s Jews and the Holocaust in shaping thenational culture. Okudo is looking ahead after graduating to a jobin New York with Goldman Sachs, where he expects to gain invest-ment banking experience that will take him closer to his goal ofworking in sub-Saharan Africa to promote capital investment inworthy projects. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, the twoare in complete agreement about the value of their internationalexperiences. “It’s important to just go somewhere else and getanother perspective on the world,” says Weyrick. “I felt it legit-imized me as a person.

“I have,” Okudo adds, “a much better understanding of the waythe world works.”T

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HEATHER WEYRICK (TOP) AND MELKIZEDECK OKUDO TYPIFY SWARTHMORE’S

GROWING INTERNATIONAL FOCUS. HE CAME FROM KENYA TO SWARTHMORE TO

STUDY ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, AND SHE TRAVELED TO POLAND

TO STUDY THE ROLE OF THEATER IN CREATING A NATIONAL IDENTITY.

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Amid the 11:15 a.m.swirling motion inKohlberg’s Coffee Bar, studentsgreet each other above the din.Friends plan to meet for lunchafter their next class, shifting inopposite directions with theircups of fuel. A few stragglers,draping their feet over theplump lounge chairs, miracu-lously catch catnaps.

Perched on a high stool,biology major Katie Davenport’05 cushions her chin againsther hands on the table. She’swaiting for Sharon Pierce, anEnvironmental Services (ES) employee andher Learning for Life (L4L) partner. Pierce,who is also a L4L Steering Committee mem-ber with 15 years of College service, woke upat 2:30 a.m. to start her 4 a.m. shift inParrish. Like many other ES workers, shetakes additional cleaning jobs off campus.

“Everyone’s always talking about all thework they have to do,” Pierce says. But L4L“lifts you up and makes your work easier bygiving you knowledge.”

Davenport, who played rugby before aninjury, learned about staff members carryingtwo jobs when a Public Safety driver helpedher get around campus. “She mentionedhaving two jobs and not going to bed until 3a.m.,” Davenport recalls. “So I said, ‘Ishould be driving you.’”

Shortly after that experience, Davenport

decided to join L4L. “I became more awareof how privileged we [students] are and howsome employees are working really hard allof the time,” she says.

Pierce and Davenport, who are learningtogether how to use a video camera from theEducation Department, both have colds.But they brighten in each other’s presence.

“Katie is so open and easy to joke withthat you’ve got to love her,” Pierce says.

“She’s a sweetheart and makes my day!”Davenport, in turn, says she values “talkingto someone with experience [who has] thesame wacky humor.”

“But I would never interfere with herclasses,” Pierce says, smiling at her friend,who is considering a future in genetics. Lastsemester, Carly Hammond ’02 worked withPierce on photography skills, resulting in a

campus exhibit (and many of thephotos for this story).“I always ask permission to

take photos,” says Pierce, whofinds video more challenging.“Students are easier to interview[on video] because they don’tlabel things. You see people’sreactions.”

Through “trial and error,”Davenport says they are experi-menting with the video camera.“But mostly, we just have fun.”

Coordinating schedules, theymeet two times a week. “We’refilming and interviewing people

we meet on campus,” she adds. “We’re try-ing especially to film other L4L partnershipsand see what they’re doing.”

Pierce—who describes herself as shy—has learned to approach people and simplyask, “What’s on your mind today?” She saysthat students and others on campus wel-come the opportunity to talk about family orto dance in front of the camera. Pierce takesturns doing interviews with Davenport,“who wanted to share and didn’t want totake control.”

Before arriving in Kohlberg, Pierce fin-ishes an interview with L4L partners KarlyFord ’03 and ES worker Angela Freeman,who make electronic greeting cards to prac-tice typing and word processing. “Angelasays that Karly lifts up her day and makesher a better person,” Pierce reports.

Le a r n i n gf o r L i f e

I N N O VAT I V E S T U D E N T - S TA F F PA R T N E R S H I P SE X C H A N G E K N O W L E D G E , E X P E R I E N C E ,

A N D F R I E N D S H I P.

By Andrea Hammer

Photographs by Sharon Pierce*

*Unless noted otherwise

Left: Sharon Pierce and grandson Nacier at LongwoodGardens during the L4L Summer Experience.Center: Assistant Professor of Education DianeAnderson recently learned that L4L is the focus of aJune plenary session at the Friends Association forHigher Education National Conference at Swarthmoreand Pendle Hill. Right: Friends Historical LibraryCurator Christopher Densmore (center) during asummer workshop.

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Freeman, who has worked at Swarth-more for a decade, wants to become a socialworker. “We found a program at WidenerUniversity and worked on the applicationtogether,” says Ford. “Angie went to anopen house and is now all set to start workon her degree in January by taking nightclasses.”

Pierce approaches her next “victim” inKohlberg. “Do you have anything on yourmind that you want to share?” she asks, asDavenport begins to film.

Then, the batteries die suddenly.“We’ve had a lot of technical

problems,” says Davenport, search-ing for an electric outlet. Sittingdown on the floor, she reads theuser manual and recalls that “oncewe forgot the tape.”

Pierce and Davenport exchangea private look and burst into laugh-ter again.

“I take a lot from the Collegeand wanted to give something fun toSharon,” Davenport says. “It’s good to havecommunity.”

Conceptualized in 1998 by a transferstudent, staff, and an education professor,the campus-based L4L Program was launchedin spring 1999. Initially pairing only a hand-ful of participants, the program now match-es approximately 100 students and staffmembers, who generally meet two hours aweek. Together, they explore continuing

education interests, including GED and dri-ver’s license preparation, computer and chessskills, and choreography and sign language.

“Most of the staff [members] involvedare from ES, but, increasingly, DiningServices staff are joining the program,” saysL4L co-coordinator Brigid Brett-Esborn ’04.“We have a longtime participant from facili-ties and a request from [a member of] theScott Arboretum staff,” adds co-coordinatorJessica Lee ’03.

Maintenance employee John Haubrichbecame partners with Lester Tran ’03—after

several frustrating attempts on his own—tolearn Web design. Through L4L, he finallycreated the Web site he had long imaginedabout his family, including a photo gallery(http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/jhaubri1).

“Family is everything to me,” he says.In exchange, Haubrich shared “lessons

about life: family, children, work, happiness,and relationships,” says Tran. After attend-ing graduate school, Tran will “translate L4Lexperience to practice in the education field.”

Haubrich stresses that Tran was a good

instructor because he wouldn’t do the workfor him. “He just monitored the work, and Idesigned the Web site myself,” he says.Similarly, Tran believes that L4L offers the“opportunity to build a strong friendshipwith someone you otherwise would notmeet during your time at Swarthmore. Twogiven people can learn all sorts of lessonsfrom one another and, from there, build astrong, long-lasting friendship.”

According to Pat James, associate direc-tor for training and student programs at theLang Center for Civic and Social Responsi-

bility, L4L’s “most important accomplish-ment is building community among stu-dents and staff,” she says. “One of thefavorite parts of my job is to be part oflaunching a successful program and seeingstudents and other staff assume leadershipas gracefully as the student and staff coordi-nators of L4L have done.”

Giving L4L its initial impetus,pioneering student co-coordinators SusieAnsell ’02 and Elizabeth Derickson ’01

“I envision L4L as one of the new Lang Center forCivic and Social Responsibility’s core programs, andit certainly is a model that is of great interest toother colleges and universities,” says Pat James.

Left: LFL Steering Committee Member Liz Dozier hugs pio-neering L4L student co-coordinator Susie Ansell. Right: DonBankston, Brigid Brett-Esborn, Jessica Lee, Jaimie Layton,and Liz Dozier (left to right) relax before their 2002 SCALEconference presentation at the University of NorthCarolina–Chapel Hill.

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applied for—and received—a Eugene M.Lang [’38] Opportunity Grant. L4L is alsosupported by a Literacy Action NetworkGrant through Student Coalition for Actionin Literacy Education (SCALE; see laterdescription about L4L members represent-ing Swarthmore at these conferences) and aSwarthmore Foundation Grant.

“Getting the program off the ground wasdefinitely a struggle,” says Ansell, now aresearch associate at Education Week. “L4Lneeded a strong commitment from both stu-dents and staff members because the pro-gram was based on a bond of trust. Neitherpartner could let the other down by missingtoo many meetings or slacking off.”

But after many made full commitmentsto L4L, the challenge became “dealing withmore logistical issues such as attempting toappropriately pair over 100 eager partici-pants who all had extreme variety in sched-ules and educational interests,” she adds.“Although there were always a few partner-ships that faltered each semester, we hadoverwhelming success with pairing studentsand staff members—mainly because bothparties were so excited and enthusiasticabout joining the program!”

According to Ansell, L4L fills needs inboth partners’ lives. Swarthmore “academicscan be so trying, a student’s schedule can beso exhausting … and to have someone at theend of the day to give you a big hug and pullyou off into a corner of the library to justtalk, to catch up on each other’s lives andfamilies—nothing ever made me feel so

comforted and loved.”Jessica Lee stresses that Ansell and

Derickson “are responsible for its successtoday.” She adds that Assistant Professor ofEducation Diane Anderson “is the rock ofthis program.”

Growing out of Anderson’s courseLiteracies and Social Identities, L4L recon-ceptualizes the traditional teacher-studentmodel. Anderson thinks that “one-on-oneinformal learning, community change, andmutual and reciprocal participation” charac-terize L4L. “Many service staff members areamong the ‘working poor,’ with two jobs,and some have been historically disadvan-

taged educationally through race, socioeco-nomics, and class,” she says (see sidebar).

The College supports L4L by allowingstaff up to three paid hours of work time tomeet with student partners each week.Based on mutual respect for the knowledgeeach person has to offer—regardless of jobstatus and income—L4L draws partnerstogether as peers with common interests.Learning is an equal exchange.

“Regardless of age, ethnic background,past experience, place of origin, religion, and

education—we’re all human,” says Ansell.“We all crave love and affection and newexperiences.We all love to learn new thingsand to make new friends.We all share com-mitments to personal relationships—tofamily and friends.We all feel sad and lonelyat times, and we all love to share joy withothers! We all deserve respect from others.We all feel pride in the work we do, whetherthat work [is] a 10-page history paper orwaxing the floors in Beardsley.”

She adds: “All employed adults are pro-fessionals. We must value and respect thework they do. A person’s sense of self-respect and self-pride directly stems from

their job and how well they do it. Peopleknow their jobs, they know their experi-ences, and we must draw on that knowledgeif we want to improve the system….Whetheryou are 5 or 50 years old, you do not deserveto be talked down to. The first person to talkto when you want to improve the system issomeone already in the system.”

Derickson, who is serving in the PeaceCorps in Cape Verde, off West Africa, wasvisiting in State College, Pa., during a recentholiday. “I became so involved in the L4LProgram because I had such a wonderfullypositive experience with my learning part-ner, Don Bankston,” she says. “I wanted toensure that other students and staff mem-bers had the opportunity to have similarexperiences.”

Left: Current L4L student co-coordinators Jessica Leeand Brigid Brett-Esborn matched 100 staff and stu-dents as L4L partners in the fall. Center: Kenny Whyejoined Bonnie Peterson during the L4L SummerExperience trip to Chester. Right: Hamzi Wali and PatJames celebrate the accomplishments of L4L (all leftto right).

“L4L enables a mutual, shared joy of learningand discovery,” Anderson says. “Staff, too, areliving a ‘life of the mind’—a lifestyle that our

society tends to claim for its scholars.”

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DIANEANDERSON

Now focusing on preschool developmentin the Office of Social Welfare and teachingcomputer classes at the region’s youth centerin her Peace Corps work, Derickson adds:“As I struggle keeping 12 students engagedand on track at one time in my computerclasses, I miss the ideal nature of my one-on-one learning partnership with Don.Sometimes I feel trapped by the mandatedcurriculum of my computer course, and Iwish I could follow the learner-motivatedmodel of L4L.”

Derickson and Bankston—still intouch—created the L4L Web site(http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin.learn-ingforlife/), which Bankston updates astheir Web guru. An L4L Steering Committeemember who now has his own computerconsulting business and janitorial service,Bankston works on campus as an ES super-visor from 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m.

“L4L helped me learn computer lan-guage,” says Bankston, who was “heart-broken” when Derickson left campus. “Ilearned so much with Liz; we did a lot of theL4L footwork together.”

According to Bankston, Liz did the L4Lgroundwork—“knocking on doors”—and“Susie got things into action,” he says.Information Technology Services and theArt Department also gave their “time andresources.”

In addition, Bankston describes “friend-ly professors who helped L4L get going”during the summer program, when “every-

one in L4L has input.” Professor of StudioArt Randall Exon offered a class before thegroup visited an art museum, and Professorof Studio Art Brian Meunier taught photog-raphy before they experimented with single-use cameras.

Since his L4L experience, Bankston andothers from L4L “enjoy talking with stu-dents. Now there is community betweenstaff and students,” he says.

“I’ve seen attitudes change, and confi-dence has grown.”

During the past two summers, theL4L Summer Experience has offered group-oriented workshops and excursions. In2002, Lee organized the eight-week syl-labus, including sessions on nutrition, gar-dening, physical fitness, and genealogicalresearch.Group tours to LongwoodGardens,Chester’s historical sites, and the AfricanAmerican Museum in Philadelphia, withlunch in Chinatown, were also conducted.

In her end-of-the-summer report to theLang Open Competition Grant Committee,Lee wrote: “This summer experience … hashad great impact on me personally, academ-ically, and professionally.... I have beengiven great perspectives to take into my sen-ior year and a more realistic perspectivewith which to live my life.”

Lee also reported the need for increasedadvertising, staff member involvement, andfaculty participation. “In summary, the [L4L]Summer Experience requires improvedinfrastructural support and organization,”she wrote.

Ansell had advised Lee to delegate dutiesfor greater staff involvement and control

over the program. “However, this is easiersaid than done.Many of the staff memberswork multiple jobs and have families, all ofwhich make most of the organizationalduties inconvenient or impossible,” Leesays. “I personally felt that as long as I wasacting upon the suggestions and decisionsof the Steering Committee, I was adequatelyinvolving the staff members.”

The current committee includes Lee,Brett-Esborn, Dozier, Pierce, and Bankston.

“I tried to connect with the DiningServices and grounds staff, but their sched-ules were incompatible with the ES staff’sschedules. Also, it was impossible for themto participate in the extended trips [becauseof] their work times,” Lee says. “I hope thatwe will eventually be able to say that L4Linvolves all of the Swarthmore Collegecommunity.”

In her own L4L team with HeatherFleharty ’03 and ES staff member DoeshesBrinson, “the most wonderful part was therelationship that developed among all threeof us,” Lee says. “We became so close thatwe could talk about family and personalmatters and have come to rely on each otherfor help outside of the academic/tutor-tuteerealm. The most challenging part of thepartnership is knowing that the [hierarchi-cal] system may never change: The prevail-ing attitudes, which include disrespect ofand indifference toward staff members oncampus, are difficult to change. Even whenDoeshes gets her GED or gets another job,

Left: Liz Dozier is grateful to Sara Lawrence LightfootProfessor of English Chuck James, Diane Anderson, andothers in L4L “for a great partnership.”Center: Professorof Studio Art Brian Meunier taught a photography work-shop during the L4L Summer Experience. Right: Al Miserand Liz Derickson attended the 2000 SCALE conference.

she will be replaced by someone else.”In the November L4L newsletter,

Brinson says: “This will be my last yearworking with Jessica and Heather, as theyare both seniors this year. I am going tomiss them so much. At the College, throughthis program, they have learned a lot fromme…. I can go to them when things are

going on in my life, and they will help mewith the right decision and the best results.”

Hamza Wali, another ES employee whoworked with Meggie Miao ’03 to learnChinese, “was very impressed with the ideaof a one-on-one learning system,” he says.“It was like having your own private tutoron whatever subject matter an individualdesires to learn. L4L is a very unique learn-ing program that allows students and staffthe opportunity to become learning part-ners, to break the social boundary, and toestablish friendship.”

Miao, an art major and Asian studiesminor pursuing work as a photo journalist,says: “I was really lucky to work withHamza, who was not only a longtime activeL4L participant but also an inspiring personwho has made a lot of achievements….Hamza not only has mastered all kinds ofcomputer skills, he was enrolled in a schoolnearby while working, trying to get a para-legal degree!”

She adds: “It was very pleasant to be ableto spend a set amount of time with himeach week, teaching the basic greeting

phrases and some cultural phenomena. Itwas even more pleasant to be able to justtalk to him, to see how his studies weregoing. At the time, Hamza was involved inthe Living Wage Campaign, and we wouldchat about how that was progressing, andwhat Hamza thought about different issuesconcerning that.”

Wali, who received his paralegal degree atDelaware County Community College lastspring, says: “Without a doubt, the L4LProgram has indeed influenced my thinkingand outlook toward making a difference inother people’s improvement as well as myown….My biggest challenge is to remainfocused on the social and economic issuesthat affect the underprivileged in our society.The source of satisfaction is to make a dif-ference and to encourage others to learn forlife and exercise a voice for economic andsocial change while employed here.”

Wali credits Ansell, his first L4L partner,“a great deal for influencing, motivating,and empowering me to achieve personalgrowth and development. That inspired meto take a leadership role…. I was also select-ed, along with two other staff members, twostudents, and Diane Anderson to participatein a workshop for the SCALE Conference atthe University of North Carolina in October2000.”

Al Miser, an ES supervisor who greetspeople in Parrish Hall with an ever-presentsmile, also attended the 2000 SCALE

Conference. “It was my first plane ride,” herecalls. “Professor Diane Anderson sat nextto me, helping to calm my nerves.”Describing his friend,Miser says Anderson“is like an angel from heaven—such a won-derful, caring person. She treats people likeevery person is on one level, the humanlevel. I’ve also met her family.”

Describing her experience at the SCALEConference in 2000, Anderson wrote: “Itwas very powerful to have students and staffmembers who have been involved in L4Land researching L4L as collaborators andpresenters. Liz Derickson, Liz Dozier, AlMiser, and Hamza Wali were wonderfulpublic speakers. They articulated both thepersonal and the community effects of theprogram. They represented Swarthmore inthe best possible way, and I am so proud tohave been among them.”

Miser, who continues to learn aboutcomputers with Michael Loeb ’03, adds that“The conference was very educational andinformative. Swarthmore College reallystood out. Other schools want a programlike L4L.”

The November L4L newsletter describesthe “Year-Round Service Learning” presen-tation that Lee, Brett-Esborn, Dozier,Bankston, and Jamie Layton of DiningServices gave at the 2002 SCALE Confer-ence in Chapel Hill, N.C. “L4Lers haveattended this conference for the past threeyears, and every year, L4L is told that thereis no other program like ours in the nation!”

As conceived in Ansell’s original grantapplication, one L4L goal is to have othercolleges replicate the program.

“Welcome to WSRN, 91.5 FM,Swarthmore’s fiercely independent radiostation,” says Lillian Ray ’05, a math major

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“I know my role as a student and in the world.I’m here for myself, but it’s important to know

that I’m here for our community,” Ray says.

Left: Associate Professor of History Allison Dorsey (center) ran a workshopfocusing on African American history. Right: Shelly Mattison (left) andSharon Pierce enjoy a lighthearted moment in Chinatown after visiting theAfrican American Museum in Philadelphia during the L4L Summer Experience.

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aspiring to teach high school students. “Ihope Kenny will join me soon, bringing hismix of smooth jazz and soul.”

Kenny Whye, an ES employee, is her L4Lpartner. Their radio show is popular withWhye’s friends, like Liz Dozier—Ray’s otherL4L partner—who listens while cleaningHicks.

“It’s my comfort,” Dozier says later,pointing to her headphones.

Back in Parrish, before Ray’s showbegins, she props herself on the back of achair in the barren lounge outside the stu-dio—stopping to catch her breath afterclimbing four flights. “That’s the hard part,”she says.

But “it’s especially rewarding to help astaff member be heard all over campus andget to feel a little more like part of the com-munity. My favorite part of L4L is getting toknow local community members who livehere, have roots here, have been here foryears, and who interact with students on amuch more personal level than professorsdo,” Ray says.

“It makes me feel like Swarthmore is amuch less isolated, idealized place—like it’sin a real community [similar to] the ones weall grew up in,” says Ray, who is fromCharlottesville, Va. “Plus, it’s a good chanceto make new friends, learn new skills, andlearn a lot about being good teachers andstudents, who need to be brave and willingto put themselves on the line. They have tobe willing to speak up and ask questions.”

After a few minutes, Ray says, “We bettergo into the studio.” Ray finds a CD leftplaying by the preceding phantom DJ andselects three more to fill her hour.

Meanwhile, after her cleaning shiftends in Hicks, Dozier slips her head-

phones around her neck. She hops up on acomputer room stool—just down the hallfrom the engineering lounge, with stacks ofjournals such as Network Computing andModern Steel Construction. Cranes workingon the new science center, emerging withinimmediate view from the large windows,drone as students collaborate in a nearbylab.

“I could retire at any time,” says 67-year-old Dozier, who has worked at the Collegefor 18 years. But I like being around the stu-dents and absorbing the information.”

Algebra was her “favorite subject” inhigh school, which Dozier didn’t completewhen she married in 1951. Since then, how-ever, she has completed a GED.

Ray says that Dozier is “incredibly goodat math” and hopes to have more time towork on additional algebra or computerprojects together. Inreturn, Dozier thinks her

forte is “giving students love.We tell eachother stories about our families.”

A member of the L4L Steering Commit-tee, Dozier wanted to learn more about com-puters, so she could explore her family’sgenealogy. “My mother died when I was 3years old, and I did research to find some ofher relatives,” she says. A link to her “FiveGenerations Page” (http://www.geo-cities.com/lizdozier1/fivegenerations.html)is now on the L4L Web site.

“I think it is really important for stu-dents to have a community here that we feellike a responsible part of,” Ray says. “I alsothink that having an adult learning partnercan teach both partners so much aboutteaching and learning.”

With her eyes gleaming, Dozier says thatL4L “helps me feel part of the campus.We’reall flourishing in this program.”T

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Learning for Life: Research and FindingsAssistant Professor of Education Diane Anderson has completed research with L4L participantsabout their program. Anderson’s article “Students and Service Staff: Learning and Research-ing Together on a College Campus” elaborates on these findings in the Michigan Journal ofCommunity Service Learning (spring 2003); for details, see http://www.umich.edu/~mjcsl/.

• Large group settings can be frustrating and even hurtful to L4L staff, no matter how wellintended. Staff discussed earlier classroom-based experiences and how humiliated they couldfeel. L4L staff prefer one-on-one and informal learning partnerships.

• L4L staff has been traditionally distanced from the students and peripheral to the College’smain purpose. Yet, especially among long-term employees, staff has maintained a deep com-mitment to the institution and its students; they carry time and institutional memory.

• Staff is now more likely to be present in places that were previously frequented primarily bystudents and faculty, such as in McCabe Library, at public-area computers, and in recreationalfacilities. L4L has increased awareness about staff’s difficulty in negotiating and using theseresources; many do not have access to computers or e-mail.

• L4L partners stand together as learners and teachers, students and workers, elders and youth,male and female, person of color—and whatever else categorizes and separates people.

Left: Another 2002 L4L Summer Experience workshopinvolved a trip to Chester, Pa. Right: Andrew Bunting,curator of the Scott Arboretum, facilitated a group dis-cussion during a visit to Longwood Gardens.

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RECENT EVENTSParis:The revitalizedParis Connection recentlyhosted Associate Profes-sor of Political ScienceCynthia Halpern, whodiscussed current worldevents with Swarth-more alumni. ThisConnection conduct-ed a successful wine-tasting event in the win-ter. If you are interested inreceiving information regardingParis Connection events, contactthe Alumni Relations Office atalumni@swarthmore.edu, andyour name will be passed alongto Paris Connection ChairCatherine SeeleyLowney ’82.

Philadelphia:ThePhiladelphia Con-nection held anevent—gearedtoward youngalumni (young atheart were inattendancetoo!)—at BuffaloBilliards in Philadelphia. Pool sharks andnovices alike enjoyed this fun, socialevening. This Connection wants to continuehosting events of interest to recent gradu-ates. If you are interested in participating,contact the Alumni Relations Office atalumni@swarthmore.edu.

UPCOMINGEVENTSBoston: BarrySchwartz, Dorwin P.Cartwright Professorof Social Theory andSocial Action, will visitthe Boston Connec-tion on May 9 to pres-ent a lecture titled“Too Many Choices:Who Suffers andWhy.” Watch your mail for additional infor-

mation, or contact Boston ConnectionChair Stephanie Hirsch at shirsch@-sprynet.com or (617) 498-3947.

Metro DC/Baltimore:The followingConnection event is planned:Annual Trip to Hillwood Museum andGardens. Scott Arboretum DirectorClaire Sawyers will join a docent-ledtour of Hillwood Museum and Gar-dens, one of America’s premierestate museums, on March 22 atnoon. Hillwood’s founder was Mar-

jorie Merriweather Post, heir of the Postcereal empire and one of America’s firstbusinesswomen. Encircled by wood-lands in the heart of Washington, D.C.,the 25-acre estate boasts pleasure gar-dens and important azalea and

orchid collections. Thecost is $10. ContactSampriti Ganguli ’95at (202) 545-0835or e-mail at sam-pritig@hot-mail.com. We havevery limited space,so reserve early!

Philadelphia:Thefollowing two

events are planned for this area:Art Museum. Join the Philadelphia Con-

nection for Degas and the Dance at the Phila-delphia Art Museum at 6:30 p.m. on May 2.Jill DeVonyar and Richard Kendall, majorhistorians of the dance and of Edgar Degas,have brought to this subject a new perspec-tive of remarkably fresh insight. Throughsome 150 works in all media, the show willexplore Degas’ investigation over some 40years of the dance world that was central tothe culture of Paris in his day. The cost is $17for senior citizens and $20 for others. Pay-ment must be received in advance; contactPhiladelphia Connection Chair Bruce Gould’54 at (215) 575-9320 or brucegould54@-hotmail.com to register and receive paymentinformation.

Swarthmore Connection Dinner Group.This group meets on the first Thursday ofevery month at 6 p.m. at a Philadelphia-area

restaurant. The monthly location changesdepending on the group’s palate preferences.All suggestions are welcomed! Call or e-mailBruce Gould (see earlier) or Jim Moskowitz’88 at (610) 604-0669 or jim@jimmosk.-com for the upcoming monthly meeting, orcheck the alumni Web site at www.swarth-more.edu. Also, sign up for the Philadelphialistserv to be notified by e-mail of upcomingevents.

Los Angeles:DanielUnderhill Professor ofMusic James Freemanwill speak to the LosAngeles Connection atThe Sage Hill Schoolon May 10 beginningat 1 p.m.Watch yourmail for additionalinformation, or con-tact the Alumni Rela-tions Office at alumni@swarthmore.edu.

Twin Cities:A recent planning meeting ofthe Twin Cities Connection yielded severalgreat events for 2003. Those who attendedthe meeting were Christy DeLaCruz ’96,Annika Lister Stroope ’97, Paula Beck ’90,Elizabeth Starling ’92, Lia Theologides ’89,Paul Crowell ’86, Emily Wallenfels White’43, and Martha Easton ’89. Events plannedfor 2003 include an ongoing monthly salondiscussion group, a production of TheCoconuts at the Actors’ Theatre, and a tripto the Saint Paul Saints game.Watch yourmail for more information, dates, and times.If you are interested in participating on theplanning committee for this Connection orhave an event to suggest, contact Lia The-ologides at liatheologides@yahoo.com.

LONDON CALLINGThe London Connection is also re-ener-gized and looking to plan events for spring2003. If you are interested in participatingin event planning, can suggest an event, orjust want to attend, contact Margarethe“Abby” Honeywell ’85 at abby.honeywell@-btinternet.com. or the Alumni Office atalumni@swarthmore.edu.

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© PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART

BARRY SCHWARTZ

JIM FREEMAN

C o n n e c t i o n s

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THE PHILADELPHIA CONNECTION WILL TOUR THE

PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART’S DEGAS AND THE

DANCE EXHIBIT ON MAY 2.

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VOTE FOR ALUMNI COUNCILThe Alumni Council ballots will be mailedin late April. Please take a moment toreview the ballot and vote for your repre-sentative to the Alumni Council. This year,for the first time, you can vote on-line athttp://alumniballot.com. The Web site willbecome available after ballots are mailed.

WWW.SWATThe Alumni Relations Office has recentlyredesigned the alumni pages of the CollegeWeb site. See the new look at http://www.-swarthmore.edu/alumni. E-mail the AlumniRelations Office staff at alumni@swarth-more.edu with your comments.

In an effort to provide a range ofservices to alumni, students,

and the College, the Alumni Coun-cil adopted an ambitious work planfor the 2002–2003 academic year.The plan includes initiatives priori-tized by the Executive Committeeof Council for the current year. Forthose interested in learning moreabout these initiatives, the plan isposted on the Alumni Council Webpage www.swarthmore.edu/alumni/alum-ni_council.html. Also posted there is theAlumni Council Newsletter, which summarizesthe proceedings and outcomes from the fallmeeting held on Oct. 25 to 27.

One of the special initiatives of councilthis year is to foster reconciliation betweenthe College and those feeling distanced fromit after the December 2000 decision torestructure the Athletics Program.

One major element of this initiative hasbeen the study and development of a reporton the use of consensual decision making bySwarthmore’s Board of Managers. The taskgroup, appointed by Council and chaired byJed Rakoff ’64, conducted its work over anine-month period and presented its reportto the Board at its meeting in late February.

The report contains findingsand suggestions that the taskgroup hopes will be useful to theBoard. The task group also hopesthat its report will be helpful inefforts to bring about reconcilia-tion with those still feeling dis-tanced from the College.

As part of the agreement tomake the report available to thegreater College community, the

full Report on Consensual Decision Making bythe Swarthmore College Board of Managerswas posted in early March on the AlumniCouncil Web page.

Those without Web access who wish toreceive a copy of any or all of the documentsreferenced in this column may contact theAlumni Relations Office at (610) 328-8402,requesting the Annual Work Plan of AlumniCouncil, the Alumni Council Newsletter for fall2002, and/or the Report From the Task Groupon Consensual Decision Making.

Thank you for your interest in the activi-ties of the council and for your support toSwarthmore College.

—Rich Truitt ’66President, Alumni Association

Alumni Council Update

RICH TRUITT ’66

Marc Reinganum, vice president and director ofquantitative research and portfolio strategist for

equities of OppenheimerFunds Inc., will be the keynotespeaker at the 2003 Lax Conference on Entrepreneur-ship on Sunday, April 6. Reinganum, the spouse of Ali-son Fox ’80, is renowned as the founding father ofstock market anomalies. His research in the field ofsmall cap stocks (with Rolf Banz) proved conclusivelythat it is not a “random walk down Wall Street.” Since1995, Reinganum has held the Mary Jo Vaughn Chair inFinancial Investments at Southern Methodist Universityand is currently on leave.

Beginning at noon, the Lax Conference allows alumni and cur-rent students to learn about business from alumni panelists andothers who have been successful entrepreneurs. Panel discussionsand a networking reception provide an opportunity for formal andinformal discussion. The conference, now in its fourth year, isfunded by an endowment created by a bequest from the lateJonathan Lax ’71. It is co-sponsored by the Swarthmore BusinessSociety, the Career Services Office, and the Alumni RelationsOffice.

Three panel discussions will be part of the program. Thefirst panel will address the biotechnology industry andwill highlight panelists C. Vibeke Strand ’71, a biopharma-ceutical consultant for Loftis/Strand Consulting; JosephTurner ’73, chief financial officer of Myogen Inc.; andEmily Levy ’80, principal/management consultant forSynergy Partners.The second panel discussion topic will address the future

of technology. Panelists include William Squadron ’77, chiefexecutive officer of Sportvision Systems LLC; Iqbal Quadir’81, founder of GrameenPhone and lecturer at Harvard

University’s Kennedy School of Government; Maggie Habib Gorse’73, director/consultant at Gorse Analysts; and Douglas Winneg’89, president of Software Secure Inc.

The third panel is on ethics in business. Panelists include LindaAmbrus Broenniman ’77, director of HFS Capital; Samuel Hayes III’57, Jacob Schiff Professor Emeritus of Harvard Business School;and Alan Tawil-Kummerman ’74, CEO of Foto Wire SA.

For additional information or to sign up for the conference, callthe Lax Conference Response Line (voice mail) at (610) 690-6887,or visit the conference Web site at http://www.swarthmore.edu/lax.

Attention Entrepreneurs—or Potential Ones

MARC REINGANUM

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SPRING EVENTSFamily Weekend

April 11–13

Black Alumni ReunionJune 5 and 6

Alumni WeekendJune 6–8

Alumni College AbroadMay 10–20

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Swarthmore means having yourcake and eating it too. You getto spend four years with themost brilliant minds in the worldwhile you just happen to livein the most beautiful garden inthe world.Swarthmore is a feast for the

intellect and the senses. All theworld’s problems seemmoresolvable when the crocuses arein bloom.

—Rikki Abzug ’86

s w a r t h m or ethe meaning of

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Gertrude Burdsall remembers clearly theday the growing pains first hit. As a girl

of about 8, Burdsall said she was suddenlyoverwhelmed by the desire to plant some-thing. “I happened to have some beans, so Iplanted them, not in particularly good soil,but I wasn’t very soil conscious at the time,”she recalls. “But I planted them and,muchto my surprise, they came up. And that’swhen I started growing things.”

Burdsall can still be found in her gardenevery day, tending the herbs, vegetables,and flowers she has grown to love so much.It is when she is standing within the con-fines of what she describes as her “small,informal country herb garden” that shefeels most at peace. “I just feel as thoughyou never cease to be amazed by the knowl-edge and interest that is in herbs,” she says.

“People who grow things think you justput seeds in the ground and then you havebeans.Well, it’s not all that easy,” saysBurdsall, a serious gardener for more than80 years now.

After graduating from Swarthmore,Burdsall married Ellwood Richard Burdsall’27, whom she described as a “good garden-er” who taught her much of what sheknows. Soon afterward, they moved intowhat had been Ellwood’s family summerhome in Great Barrington,Mass. The home,set on rolling farmland, was the perfectplace for the young couple to cultivate theirlove of gardening: Ellwood raised the veg-etables, and Gertrude planted the flowers.

“It was just sort of what you did—yougrew flowers,” Burdsall says. “I worked veryhard at it, and it was a very pretty garden.But then, I discovered herbs.”

Her life would never be the same. AsBurdsall recalled, she became intriguedwhen the owners of what is now called theBerkshire Botanical Garden began creatinga hillside herb garden. “It was a very unusu-al type of garden for the area, and I was justfascinated from the start,” she says.

She began reading books about herbsand talking to local herb experts, all thewhile becoming engrossed by the diversity,complexity, and varied uses of herbs.“Flowers are lovely to grow, but whenthey’re gone, they’re gone,” she explains.

“Herbs just have so much more to offerthan flowers in a flower garden. There’s justno comparison with the interest in growingthem, as I see it.”

Today, Burdsall is never more at homethan when she is with her herbs. The moth-er of three children, a grandmother to ninechildren, and a great-grandmother to ninemore, she has not strayed far from whereshe began. Seventeen years after her hus-band’s death in 1964, Burdsall moved intoa smaller house designed by her son Ben-jamin, an architect. The house stands notfar from the larger home she and Ellwoodonce shared, now a bed-and-breakfast runby her son Richard, a retired Englishinstructor.

“I was 75 when we built the house, andmy friends said to me, ‘You’re building ahouse at 75?’ But I’ve had 20 years in thishouse, and it’s been wonderful. It’s open tothe outside and the hills and the sky, andI just think it’s the most wonderful placein the world.”

Her beloved herb garden, home to morethan 50 varieties of plants, now standsdirectly adjacent to the house’s plant room.It is on her farm where she spends most ofher time these days, tending her plants,indulging her passion for cooking, andenjoying daily swims at the family bed-and-breakfast.

She stays in touch with her old class-mates and, as class secretary, writes the ’28Class Notes for the Bulletin, including regu-lar commentary on her gardens and grand-children. “Gardening is always full of sur-prises, even when one has been at it formore than 80 years!” she wrote for the Junenotes, after her discovery of frozen earlychives in the middle of a MassachusettsMarch.

So having traded the beans she onceplanted for basil and borage, Burdsall con-tinues to return to her garden every day,waiting and watching for those unexpectedsurprises that make it a joy to be alive at 96.

—Elizabeth Redden ’05

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F O R G E R T R U D E B O W E R S B U R D S A L L ’ 2 8 , H E R G A R D E N I S T H E M O S T P E A C E F U L P L A C E .

A t H o m e W i t h H e r H e r b s

IN THE BERKSHIRE MOUNTAINS OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS, GERTRUDE BURDSALL SPENDS MOST OF

HER TIME THESE DAYS TENDING TO HER HERB GARDEN, COOKING, AND SWIMMING.

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Hoping to clear the torpor of my mindand spirit, I was walking in CrumWoods one sunny spring afternoon.

I had remembered a medical claim thatwalking improves your health and longevity.But closer to home, I did not find the hur-ried pace of other walkers’ jostling on nar-row sidewalks conducive to peace of mindand thought.

Unexpected events turned my walk intoan existential bonanza. Entering the woods,I seemed to step into another world—likeAlice through the looking glass—or likeAdam in an Eden without any cares. Adammust have listened to the whisper of leaves,the rippling brook, the chatter and arias ofbirds. He must have enjoyed the bright redplumage and full-throated song of the malecardinal or the gently fluttering hues andpolka dots of butterflies. Didn’t Adam haveto climb over large tree roots and rocks inEden—hills that required tricky maneuversof balance and coordination that challengedhis mind and body? Didn’t he find caterpil-lars, insects, wildflowers, patches of daf-fodils, berry bushes and mosses, scurryingsquirrels, and chipmunks?

God had said it was “good.” Adam calledit “Paradise.”

I heard a bird, perched on a small bushseveral paces away, singing with abandon. I sat motionless on aboulder, listening with fascination.Who was the bird singing to? Noothers were in sight—no near or distant replies. Oblivious to itssurroundings, with no expectant looking around or attentive cock-ing of its head, the bird sang broken dyads and triads, repeatingthese in quick succession. I tested my weakly developed solfège in asoft whistle; I could find the intervals but not the glorious timbreand fullness of its notes.

Then, I remembered that birds have a double larynx—two sets of

vocal cords. Unlike any orchestral wind instrument, birds can pro-duce two simultaneous notes, something that string musicians call a“double stop.” My singing friend changed intervals, phrases, andemphasis apparently at whim; the mood of its song also varied fromtentative and inquiring to declarative and sometimes imperative.Interspersed was staccato chattering—a “recitative”—and low-pitched, soft, mechanical chirps, which I thought were either warn-ing sounds or reassurances for little chicks. But it was too early forchicks. No danger seemed to warrant a warning; no other living

O n eF i n e

D a yT H E A C C I D E N T A L

D I S C O V E R Y O F J O Y

By Herbert Boyaj ian Locks ley ’43

CLAIRE

SAWYERS

For the first time, itoccurred to me that birdsand mammals might

exercise theirindividual skills notjust for survival—but

for sheer joy.

For the first time, itoccurred to me that birdsand mammals might

exercise theirindividual skills notjust for survival—but

for sheer joy.

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thing was payingattention to thesong but me. Thiswinged minstrel wasrunning through itsrepertoire, exercisingits voice, developingvirtuosity, compos-ing songs, singingpaeans for sheer per-sonal joy—withouta care, feeling goodto be alive; revelingin singing as muchas it might in soar-ing. As I walked on,the lovely musicaltheme of calm andthanksgiving afterthe storm fromBeethoven’s Pastoral

Symphony ran through my mind, and I barely caught myself fromaudibly saying “thank you” to this joyous little friend.

Following gravity about 50 feet down a slope through branches,rock outcroppings, and small rain gullies, I arrived at the mead-

ow and a path beside Crum Creek. As I neared a moderate-sizedpool about 2 feet deep, I heard frantic thrashing and splashing. Inthe middle of the pool was a large dog—probably a golden retriever.It seemed to be struggling—paddling with its hind legs and flagel-lating its tail. Rising up in the water, it also thrashed with itsforepaws.

No owner was in sight.Then, to my surprise, the dog turned and swam ashore; bounded

up onto the bank about 20 feet from me; and, with a series oftremendous shakings, cast off sheets of water. It had a fawn-coloredhead, friendly eyes, a well-formed body, droopy ears, and a drippingmatted coat. It sniffed the ground and air and then looked straightat me. I wanted to make friends. So without moving, I alternatelycalled, whispered, yipped, whistled, and commanded—all tacticsthat worked with my own two dogs—but to no avail. Instead, itrolled in the soft muddy bank, rubbed its back with undulating con-tortions; got up; and chased its tail in a tight circle. It looked at meagain for an instant, then raced back into the pool.

I watched for about 5 minutes as the dog repeated this ritual sev-eral times. It was not hunting, fishing, chasing, or playing withanother dog. It was not obeying its master. It seemed to be swim-ming and rolling in the mud for sheer personal joy!

As I walked away from the creek, I saw two students passing by,holding hands and laughing.We struck up a conversation. I askedabout the dog’s master, home, and unusual behavior. They reportedthat the dog came to that pool in the creek almost every after-noon—from which I inferred that they did too—each in pursuit ofthe joys of nature.With a friendly wave, we went our separate ways.

I mused that birds, mammals, and humans do many similarthings. Birds and mammals sing and vocalize in their own peculiar

ways—bark, chirp, cheep, screech, hawk, grunt, and whistle. Theyswim, dive, fly, soar, dig, race, chase, wrestle, climb trees, play hide-and-seek; build nests, dens, burrows, and even abodes completewith dam and moat. Humans can do everything they do with greaterversatility, although sometimes not quite as well, and often requir-ing special equipment.

For the first time, it occurred to me that birds and mammalsmight exercise their individual skills not just for survival—but forsheer joy.

Humpback whales, too, might sing their low-pitched mournfulsongs not just to communicate with others at great distance butsimply to please themselves. All of us, seeking the simple joy ofusing muscles, developing coordination, exercising skills, or invent-ing new songs, new ideas, new anythings. But mostly being “up anddoing—unchained, unworried, unharried, free to choose, exuberant,at one with nature and oneself.

I had never identified joy in quite this way before. It seemed anew thought, a good recipe!

Beginning my walk had required an act of will. I had felt physical-ly tired and mentally dull. After nearly an hour of walking,

climbing, sliding, and tripping along narrow paths, I was now walk-ing faster, feeling invigorated and mentally rejuvenated.

Now it was time to return home. In the distance, I heard the softpure tones of a flute. Nearer to the source, I saw a young man withlong blond hair and full beard sitting on the stone wall beside thestage of the College’s amphitheater. I rested for a few minutes out ofsight and enjoyed a solo flute concert. But it was his succession ofmoods that intrigued me. At any given moment, the theme he select-ed might be flighty and tripping, slow and melancholy, lilting andromantic—and occasionally loud and strident. Like the ancientpsalmists, the shepherd in Tristan and Isolde, and the Neanderthalinventor of the first willow whistle with side holes—he was givingexpression to some corner of the human heart. Away from the hub-bub of college life, he seemed as at peace as a lone young man canbe. I walked up to the young musician, said a few friendly andappreciative words, and went on with a happy little hum under mybreath, like Pooh.

Soon, I passed back through the looking glass and was startledby revving engines, perforated mufflers, and thumping car stereos. Ihurried back home, back to my Eve.

A pastor, or perhaps a philosopher, once said: “Since the fall ofAdam and Eve and the banishment from Eden, mankind has had tosuffer and work. But we are even now building our own Eden.” But Ithought to myself: Man can build a better mousetrap, automobile, orcomputer. We can build tall steel and glass office buildings; resorthotels; garish gambling casinos; and, yes, magnificent cathedrals.

But build another Eden?God did not destroy Eden or even lock the gate. The primeval

forest is still there (at least for a while longer) and so is primevaljoy! How fortunate we are to have an Eden so accessible to this treeof knowledge.

And, by the way, the doctors are right: My health is alreadybetter!T

Herbert Locksley is a retired neurosurgeon who lives in Wallingford, Pa.

“BEGINNING MY WALK HAD REQUIRED AN ACT OF

WILL,” SAYS LOCKSLEY. “I HAD FELT PHYSICALLY

TIRED AND MENTALLY DULL.” ALL THAT WAS

ABOUT TO CHANGE.

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Just because attorneys make it throughthe rigors of law school doesn’t mean

they will automatically perform like PerryMason in court, says seasoned trial attorneyRick Appel.

In an effort to help fellow lawyers whoneed to brush up on their “act” before ajudge and jury, the Cheltenham, Pa., residenthas combined his passion for theater andthe law by teaching a course called TheaterSkills in the Courtroom.

In recent years, Appel noticed that manyinexperienced attorneys weren’t receivingadequate training in courtroom “perfor-mance.” The problem, he maintains, is thatlaw trial-skills courses don’t get to that level.In addition,more cases are settled out ofcourt now, and the economics of law practicemakes firms less likely to send their newerattorneys into courtrooms to learn bywatching.

“Twenty years ago, law firms sent at leasttwo attorneys to a trial, and it was the sec-ond, less experienced attorney’s job to helpadministratively. They could also watch andgain valuable tips on how to act during atrial. Now, that doesn’t happen,” he says.

As a result, inexperienced trial attorneysworry too much about looking good for theclient or battling the opposing attorney.They forget that their real audience is thejury, and they’re not prepared with theirprops. They also tend to get excited and talktoo fast, and a nervous lawyer is more diffi-cult to listen to, Appel says.

“The best way to influence a jury is to tella story,” he tells a recent seminar class.“You’ve got to get away from being a lawyerand become a storyteller.”

Appel has taught hundreds of studentsthroughout the country in law schools, gov-ernment agencies, continuing educationclasses, and in his own three-year-old con-sulting business, Trial Run Inc.His one-dayseminars teach lawyers how to use theirvoices; relate to an audience; focus onbreathing,movement, and the use of props;and tell their “stories” in a compelling, hon-est fashion.He even brings in professionalactors and directors to help instruct and cri-tique his pupils.

One of the techniques Appel tries to con-

vey to his students is the importance ofspeaking from a position of honesty withoutbetraying their true emotions.

“I don’t want them to think, ‘I’ve got tosound like a lawyer here,’ but rather ‘I have astrong opinion about something, and I wantyou to understand it,’” he says.

Part of the course also focuses on the“verbal mannerisms” that can distract froma courtroom presentation. “Lots of attorneysuse words such as ‘like’ or ‘uh’ to fill in thegaps of their conversation, or they repeat awitness’s answer—things I call ‘busy words.’They also tend to talk fast because they don’twant to lose the floor to the other attorney.”Appel encourages his students to stop at theend of each sentence and breathe beforethey start their next thought.

He also teaches various acting “tricks ofthe trade,” such as facial gestures, lettingdialogue and movements happen naturally.

“Public speaking doesn’t come naturallyjust because you went to law school,” Appel

says. “And the way things happen [in court]can either diminish or enhance the atten-tion to your case.”The 62-year-old has worked as a trial

lawyer for the last 30 years. He currentlyfocuses on serious personal injury,medicalmalpractice, and product liability in theJenkintown, Pa., office of Groen, Lamm,Goldberg & Rubenstone.His passion for the theater has existed,

however, since his days at Swarthmore,when he helped write the original studentmusical called The Hamburg Show (then anannual Swarthmore tradition).“I had a part of me that I discovered at

Swarthmore that wanted to continue withthe disciplines of acting and directing,” saidAppel, who went on to graduate from Tem-ple University’s School of Law in 1966.Although he originally intended to be anentertainment lawyer in New York City, dur-ing summer 1964, he helped representclients involved in the civil rights movementin Georgia in the ’60s.He eventuallyreturned to Philadelphia as a public defend-er and then moved to private practice andcivil litigation.

Appel and his wife, Diana Dooley, havetwo children,Molly, 18, and Benjamin, 16,and both are involved in music and drama.Between his law practice and courtroomskills courses, Appel said he doesn’t have thetime to be involved with the theater. But hedoes sing in the local Abington Choral Club.

In addition to his theater skills course,Appel also teaches a workshop called TheElements of Advocacy, which focuses on theart of persuasion and communication skills.He is also scheduled to offer a workshop onpublic speaking and persuasion at Swarth-more on March 22 to 23. The seminar willhelp students deal with public speaking andthe art of persuasion in job interviews andoral exams.

He noted that his one-day courses arenot meant to duplicate a semester or year-long course at a college or theater school.

“But [the course] can give some level ofcomfort and confidence and open gatewaysto maximizing whatever experiences comealong,” he said.

—Angela Doody

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R I C K A P P E L ’ 6 2 T E A C H E S T H E A R T O F P E R S U A S I O N .

C o u r t r o o m T h e a t r i c s

RICK APPEL HAS COMBINED HIS PASSION FOR

THEATER AND THE LAW BY CREATING A COURSE

FOR ATTORNEYS CALLED THEATER SKILLS IN THE

COURTROOM.

T h e G o o d H i p p i eM A R K V O N N E G U T ’ 6 9 K N E W B O T H T H E I D E A L I S M A N D I N S A N I T Y O F T H E ’ 6 0 S .

Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: AMemoir of Insanity, Seven Stories Press,2002.Orginally published by Praeger,1975

There’s a saying about the 1960s: If youremember them, you weren’t really there.

Mark Vonnegut was definitely there—andhe remembers.

The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity isabout Vonnegut’s descent into madnesswhile living in a commune in BritishColumbia. First published in 1975 and reis-sued in November, it chronicles hispost–Swarthmore odyssey and illness—then diagnosed as schizophrenia but likelyunderstood today as bipolar disorder.

It’s also a cogent contemporary accountof the mind-set of the 1960s—one of thebest books I’ve read about the restless ideal-ism and hard work of “being a good hip-pie.” The Eden Express doesn’t analyze orromanticize the hippie experience—it justpours it onto the page with all the passion,anguish, and dichotomies that characterizedthe time.

“I think most of us were fed to the teethwith the brand of rationalism that hadmade up so much of our education,” Von-negut wrote. “Western rationality had madea dreadful mess of this lovely planet, but itwas more that this form of rationality hadtaken up the lion’s share of our minds with-out giving us much in return….We wantedto free some of our rational brain space tomake room for other ways of being.”

The Eden Express depicts hippie life andits mental aberrations without a shred ofdefensiveness. A new afterword to the 2002edition (the foreword is by the author’sfamous father Kurt) offers this retrospectiveexplication:

“We were not the spaced-out, flaky, self-absorbed, wimpy, whiney flower childrendepicted in movies and TV shows…. It’s truethat we were too young, too inexperienced,and, in the end, too vulnerable to bad advicefrom middle-aged sociopathic gurus. Thingseventually went bad, but before they wentbad, hippies did a lot of good. Brave, hon-est, and true, they paid a price.”

One such guru was Harvard professorand acid-head Timothy Leary. For followers

of his mantra, “turn on, tune in, drop out,”LSD and other psychedelics were the gate-ways to a new consciousness—a way ofshort-circuiting the Western rationality thatwas so troubling to our generation. Thetrouble was, Vonnegut said in an Octoberinterview, “we didn’t know that drugs werebad for us. I really do think that was a keypiece of information we were missing.”

Another guru, psychologist R.D. Laing,may have done more damage.When Von-negut fell ill at the commune, his fellowEden seekers viewed his psychosis throughLaing’s then-popular idea that insanity is asane response to an insane society. ThoughMark was going crazy, his friends (includingseveral classmates and friends from Swarth-more who also lived at the commune) atfirst saw his behavior—and even his mis-ery—as normal behavior in the crazy worldof 1971. Mark had been the commune’svisionary, and it seemed that his mind wasmerely intensifying its natural self. Onlyafter he became incoherent, stopped eating,and threatened suicide did his comradesseek medical treatment for him in Vancou-ver. He eventually suffered three severe psy-chotic “crack-ups,” as he calls them, and washospitalized twice.

The book’s description of Vonnegut’spsychosis—the voices in his head, delu-sions, and despair he feels when he thinkshe will not recover—is vivid and immediate.At one point, he decides that his thoughtsare responsible for an earthquake in Califor-nia that has killed his girlfriend. He alsoimagines that his father has killed himself.

The third break, which came unexpected-ly as he seemed to be recovering, was theworst.

Vonnegut writes: “I was running out ofexcuses. My father hadn’t committed sui-cide. Virginia was OK.My mother was OK.Spring was on schedule…. I had followed alldoctor’s orders faithfully, and here I wasback in that fucking little [isolation] roomagain.”

He adds: “My suicide attempts becamemore frequent, more pathetic, more sincere.Before, I had danced with death, loveddeath, hated death, teased death, beenteased by death.”

Against the odds, he recovered. Slowly,

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“I think most ofus were fed tothe teeth withthe brand of

rationalism that hadmade up so muchof our education.”

“IT WASN’T THAT HARD TO LIVE WITHOUT

ELECTRICITY AND OTHER CONVENIENCES ON

NEXT TO NO MONEY,” WRITES VONNEGUT (ABOVE,

AT THE COMMUNE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA, 1970).

“I LOVED WORKING SUNUP TO SUNDOWN

BUILDING A HOUSE, CUTTING FIREWOOD, AND

MAKING A GARDEN. AND I DIDN’T HAVE TO

WORRY THAT MY EFFORTS WERE SOMEHOW

SUBSIDIZING DEATH AND DESTRUCTION.”

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with the help of a doctor who prescribedantipsychotic medication and vitamin thera-py, he regained his mind. He went backEast, wrote this book, went to HarvardMedical School, and became a pediatrician.He also learned from his disease.

The Eden Express closes with a letter to afriend who is suffering from schizophrenia.“Simply realizing that the problem is bio-chemical can be enormously helpful,” hewrote to her. “No one’s to blame. Psycholog-ical heroics are not required to improvethings…. As poetic as schizophrenia is, Iknow of very few cases in which poetry wasof much help.”

Mark Vonnegut was one of the luckyones; he got better. Yet he still believes thathis crack-ups remain a presence in his life.

“I know that I was very sick and gotwell—well enough to participate in life,” hesaid. “I’ve had other things that have beenextremely challenging. I had one more psy-chotic episode. I’ve had horrible troublewith insomnia. So sometimes, when thingsget rough, I still feel, ‘Oh shit. This can takeme out somehow.’ A lot of mental illness ishow many times you get your wheels in therut and spin. After a certain number oftimes, it gets very hard to get the wheels outof the rut.”

Mental illness drove Mark Vonnegut offthe road on the way to his Eden. Nearlythree decades after the book was written, ittraces not only Mark’s path from 1969 to1972, but also the early turns of a generationstill in spin—still wondering whether theroads we chose have brought us to wherewe truly wanted to go.

—Jeffrey Lott

OTHER BOOKSChristopher Castellani ’94, A Kiss FromMaddalena, Algonquin Books, 2003. In thisfirst novel, the author imagines a storyabout young love and war in 1943. Castel-lani, whose parents are Italian immigrants,won the SUNY Stony Brook Short FictionPrize and the Ella T. Grasso Literary Award.

Judith Fetterley ’60 and Marjorie Pryse,Writing Out of Place, University of IllinoisPress, 2003. The authors focus on regionalwriters, offering a countertraditional view-point of human development and consider-ing feminist theory and American literature.

Jonathan Franzen ’81,How to Be Alone, Far-rar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. This collec-tion of 14 essays includes the author’s con-troversial 1996 investigation of the fate ofthe American novel as well as other personalnarratives and reportage.

Marjorie Garber ’66, Quotation Marks,Routledge, 2003. These essays explore thepower of language and miscommunications.Garber is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor ofEnglish and director of the Humanities Cen-ter at Harvard, where she chairs the Depart-ment of Visual and Environmental Studies anddirects the Carpenter Center of Visual Arts.

Stephen Henighan ’84, Lost Province: Adven-tures in a Moldovan Family, Prospect Books,2002. The author of four books, Henighanexplores the struggle of an outsider in our“global village.” His controversialWhenWords Deny the World (The Porcupine'sQuill, 2002) was nominated for the Cana-da’s Governor General’s Literary Awards.

Anne Sheldon ’67, Hero-Surfing,Washing-ton Writers’ Publishing House, 2002. Thewinner of the 2001WashingtonWriters’ Pub-lishing House poetry competition, Sheldoncreates a sequence of Lancastrian poems anddelivers sonnets based on Icelandic sagas.

Jack Spafford ’44, An Interesting Life: AnAutobiography, self-published, 2003. The au-thor describes his life experiences, includingschooling,World War II, jobs, and travels.

Carol and DavidWhite ’65,Catskill DayHikes for All Seasons, Adirondack MountainClub, 2002. Describing 60 mountain hikes,the authors include practical advice, round-trip distances, difficulty ratings, summit ele-vations, and page maps.

RichardWolfson ’69, Simply Einstein,W.W.Norton, 2002. The author presents keyideas framing comtemporary physics—fromthe possibility of time travel to the fate ofthe universe.Wolfson explains the conceptsof Newtonian mechanics andMaxwell’s elec-tromagnetism, highlighting contradictionsleading to the 19th-century physics crisis.

EXHIBITAlexandra Grant ’94 organized unDRAWNat the Brewery Project in Los Angeles duringNovember and December. The exhibit in-cluded the works of 11 young, emergingartists who use drawing as a concept onwhich they base their work in other media.Grant’s own work is part of a series called“drawings without paper,” wire sculpturesthat dance across the gallery walls in theform of shadows.

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STEPHEN HENIGHAN, AUTHOR OF LOST PROVINCE,

TEACHES SPANISH AMERICAN LITERATURE AND

CULTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH, ONTARIO.

JUDITH FETTERLEY, CO-AUTHOR OF WRITING OUT OF

PLACE, IS DISTINGUISHED TEACHING PROFESSOR

OF ENGLISH AND WOMEN’S STUDIES AT SUNY–ALBANY.

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AaronWeissblum has always loved toplay games. “I was the kid who never

wanted to go to bed but wanted to play onemore game,” he says. “Today, the self-pro-claimed “game geek,” and board-gamedesigner is still playing.

The Swarthmore math major inventedhis first game, a “large, crazy, skill-and-action game too large to fit into most peo-ple’s homes,” about 15 years ago, while work-ing as a potter in a studio in Gloucester,Mass., where he still lives. His landlord likedit and connected Weissblum with an agentin the game business.

“Although my agent never actually soldany of my games,” says Weissblum, “Ilearned a lot about the business from her.”

After several years trying to sell games inthe United States,Weissblum realized thatthe U.S.market was dominated by large toyfirms like Hasbro, which bought out compa-nies such as Milton Bradley and Parker Bros.New products were narrowed to battery-rungames that look and sound “cool” and sellwell on television; or games using popularlicenses like “Harry Potter” or “Star Wars.”

“For games based on original ideas,whose value is in their design and in theinteraction of players with each other, orwhich require some skill or strategy, the mar-ket here is limited,” says Weissblum.

When he met veteran game designer AlanMoon in 1996, he learned that Europe—particularly Germany, with dozens of gamepublishers—offeredmore sales opportunities.

“I believe,” says Weissblum, “that theU.S. game industry underestimates theAmerican population, with respect to bothour interest and our willingness to be chal-lenged. That’s not so in Europe, wherethere’s a thriving culture of game playing.”

In 1999,Weissblum’s first two games,Cloud Nine (by Weissblum) and Knights of theRainbow (with Moon), were published by theAmerican division of the German companyFX Schmid. Although the American divisiondid not exist long enough for the games tobe distributed in this country,Weissblumremained undaunted. “The good thing inthis business,” he says, “is that if you sell agame to a company and it doesn’t do well,it’s not the end of the world.” If the compa-

ny does not actively produce and market thegame, the intellectual property reverts to thegame inventor. Both games were reissued in2002 by other companies.

In 2001, three games created by MoonandWeissblum were nominated for theprestigious German Spiel des Jahres (Game ofthe Year) award, the first time in the historyof the award that three games from the sameinventors were nominated. San Marco (agame of territorial control set in Venice),DasAmulett (a hunt for jewels along the Nile),and Capitol (constructing multistoriedbuildings in Ancient Rome) did not win,“but they did help get us solidly estab-lished,” says Weissblum.

He is optimistic that the U.S.market forboard games is expanding with the help ofcompanies like Rio Grande, a NewMexico–based firm that imports selected Germangames and markets them here.

Responding to growing interest, smallgame companies such as Out of the Box,which reissued Cloud Nine, are beginning tothrive. “For people like me,” says Weissblum,“it’s really important for these companies todo well. They’re the ones with the imagina-

tion to recognize that maybe Americans dowant to play some good board games.”

Weissblum’s creation of a game frequent-ly begins with an idea adapted from one fea-ture of another game. First, he physicallybuilds a prototype of the game,meticulouslyproviding clear and concise rules and creat-ing a product with bright colors and clearsymbols. The game is tested by “gamegeeks”—players sharing his obsession butnot representative of the general public—and by more average players or “non–gamegeeks,” called together by Weissblum’s wife,Kate Nordstrom.His games are mainly fami-ly games, usually for adults but also for chil-dren. He says, “If you want to make a livingat this, you have to include children.”

To supplement his game income, whichtrickles in sometimes years after selling agame,Weissblum owns a small company,Inclued (www.inclued.com.). Using puzzle-based treasure and scavenger hunts, he cre-ates team-building challenges for corporateclients. “The motivational aspect is coveredfrom the start,” he says. “It’s such fun thatwhen they hear about it they want to do it.”

—Carol Brévart-Demm

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A A R O N W E I S S B L U M ’ 8 6 M A K E S A L I V I N G F R O M I N V E N T I N G G A M E S .

A P a s s i o n f o r P l a y

WEISSBLUM’S LATEST GAME, STILL UNNAMED, DEBUTED AT THE NEW YORK TOY FAIR IN FEBRUARY. VIEW

HIS GAMES AT WWW.FUNAGAIN.COM, OR VISIT THE INCLUED WEB SITE AT WWW.INCLUED.COM.

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agent. Lashanna Lawler is liv-ing and working in a theater atLongwood Gardens. RachelKane was in Philly briefly, butshe is now abroad in Costa Rica.

Marvin Barron is living inthe museum district and work-ing in stocks and bonds or whathe refers to as “money grub-bing.” Jason Burton is workingas a jeweler’s assistant. JaredEisenstat is working at Bordersand studying Greek. He is alsolearning to play the piano.Jason S. (Skonieczny) and EricMartin are working as substituteteachers in Philly. They alsomade a magazine together. Theyshare a place with John “JB”Farley ’01, Aaron Firestone ’01,and Tim Jaeger ’00.

Marchella Tortora is living inNew York City and studying for amaster’s in social work atColumbia. Colin Weidig is inCalifornia, living life. AshleyDeMello spent the summer inBig Sur, Calif., with Teresa Pon-tual ’03 and is now in Honolulu.There, she is getting reacquaint-ed with her Hawaiian ancestryand working for Native HawaiianRights. Chris Scheller is work-ing as a fourth-grade teacher’sassistant in Boston.

Nathan Ashby-Kuhlman isworking for ajc.com and is anAtlanta Journal-Constitutionjournalism intern. NicoleGeorges-Abeyie manages aone-acre organic farm in Ana-costia, a Washington, D.C.,neighborhood. The farm is partof the Urban Oasis project.Maya Peterson is in Germany ona Fulbright Scholarship. She isstudying the experiences ofRussian immigrants.

Aurelio Perez is doing a Ful-bright in Austria. He is teachingconversational English andstudying at the U. of Innsbruck.Amanda Schneider is on a Ful-bright, studying physiologicalbiology in the Ural Mountains ofRussia. Kevin Setter is on a Ful-bright in Canada, studyingquantum gravity physics at thePerimeter Institute for Theoreti-cal Physics. Tanyaporn Wansomis also on a Fulbright, workingon empowering women through

sexual health education in Thai-land.

Ben Park is volunteering asthe adult adviser to the collegeministry of the Korean Presbyte-rian Church of Minnesota, work-ing as a driving instructor andat a coffee shop. In the upcom-ing months, he’s planning onapplying to seminaries as wellas substitute teaching at a cou-ple of local school districts.Randy Keim is working as ahospital product specialist forJohnson & Johnson, selling Pro-crit, a drug that both treatsanemia in the chronically ane-mic and serves as an alternativeto blood transfusions. Hereports that it is a dream cometrue. Mara Hvistendahl is stu-dying journalism at Columbia.

Marah Gotcsik mentionedthat Megan Choy was married inCalifornia. Marah spent a relax-ing summer in Boston with hersister. She spent a week travel-ing solo in Europe and is now inWales with the Community Serv-ice Volunteers Program. There,she provides support for chil-dren at risk of expulsion fromschool for behavior problems.

Fabienne François reportsthat she is currently working asa Spanish bookseller at Schoen-hof’s Foreign Books (also knownas a bibliophile’s candy shop) inHarvard Square, Cambridge,Mass. “I hope everyone is doingwell, and, if you’re in the neigh-borhood, do drop in at 76AMount Auburn Street, Cam-bridge,” she writes.

Finally, I (Hunter Wells)spent the summer in Philadel-phia waiting tables in colonialuniform. There, I lived withBecka Schultz until she left ona Fulbright to North China,where she is making a documen-tary film. Now, I am living nearWashington, D.C., doing anapprenticeship in fashion de-sign. In DC, I’ve run into JaimeYassif and Olga Rostapshova.

To those from whom Ihaven’t heard, I hope you’ll allsend me updates on what you’redoing, so that I can reportthem. Good luck in the comingyear, Class of 2002.

were also major featuresof the kingdom’s humanrights record.

The report also points outthat the Saudi regime has pro-vided a new home for Idi Amin,the Ugandan dictator whoseregime was responsible for thedeaths of several hundred thou-sand people in the 1970s.Working closely with a govern-ment like this (Ms. Grantworked directly with a memberof the Saudi royal family) todevelop a “liberal arts college”raises troubling questions thatthe article completely ignored.There’s a lot of cheery writingabout the excitement and valueof educating women, but thebasic morality of assisting aregime like this isn’t even anissue. I’m not necessarily criti-cizing Ms. Grant’s work, but Iam astounded that in a worldthat is filled with violence,hatred, and oppression—a fairshare of which is provided bySaudi Arabia—the article didnot even touch on some of themoral issues raised by workingwith, legitimizing, and implicit-ly supporting a regime like thisone.

PETER DARLING ’84San Carlos, Calif.

A COMPLEX PICTUREI may be the only Swarthmorealumna who also graduatedfrom Dar al-Hanaan, the privategirls’ school founded by QueenEffat, and my father has taughtat King Abdul Aziz Universityin Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, formore than 20 years. So I waspleased to learn that twoSwarthmoreans have played aninstrumental role in establish-ing Effat College in my home-town (“Liberal Arts in a Conser-

vative Land,” DecemberBulletin). Saudi Arabia’s new pri-vate colleges mark a milestonefor the country, giving Saudis—particularly women—a newrange of choices in higher edu-cation.

I was disappointed, however,to note a few factual errors inthe story. The most glaring wasthe statement that female stu-dents at the public King AbdulAziz University “are taught inseparate rooms from the malestudents, where they watch theprofessors (also male) onclosed-circuit televisions,” andthat Queen Effat “imagined acollege environment wherewomen could interact directlywith their teachers.”

In fact, female professorsand lecturers teach almost all ofthe classes at King Abdul AzizUniversity’s women’s section,located on a separate campusadjacent to the men’s campus.Yes, male professors occasional-ly teach female students viaclosed-circuit TV.My father hastaught classes that way andreports that it’s quite discon-certing not to be able to see hisstudents. But he has onlytaught female students when nofemale professor is available orqualified to teach the material.

Non-Saudis might be sur-prised to learn that Saudi Ara-bia has an exception to its ruleagainst coeducation:Male andfemale medical and dental stu-dents learn and train together.So, although private women’scolleges like Effat College arehelping to change higher educa-tion in Saudi Arabia, they areonly one part of a complex pic-ture.

EMAN QUOTAH ’95Washington, D.C.

L e t t e r s . . .continued from page 3

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COMPETING CLAIMSIn his December letter to the editor, Jeremi-ah Gelles ’63 compared Israeli settlement[in the West Bank] with American settle-ment in the West or German settlement inEastern Europe.

The first comparison is a compliment tothe Israeli settlers. The European conquestof North America gave the United States thepower to save the world from tyranny sever-al times during the last century. The worldis deeply indebted to American settlers fortheir role in giving us the strength to dogreat good.

The second comparison is inexact: TheGermans, who had settled for most of a mil-lennium in Eastern Europe, were expelleden masse because they preferred to join inon German territorial expansion and Ger-man genocide rather than recognize thecompeting moral and legal claims that thenewly born nations of Eastern Europe pos-sessed to the same land. If a comparisonwith Israel is appropriate, the situation ofthe Germans is more akin to that of thePalestinians. Indeed, if the Palestinians areever expelled, it will be because the Palestin-ian appetite for genocide and their refusaleven to recognize Israel’s legal and moralclaims to its pre-1967 boundaries make anysort of coexistence impossible. The Israeliswill then join the Czechs and the Poles asone of the peoples who realize that justice,not mercy, is essential to survival.

DAVID RANDALL ’93Brooklyn, N.Y.

BAGELS AT MIDNIGHTIn the December issue of the SwarthmoreCollege Bulletin, I noticed a pattern of con-flict to which I believe there is a solution. Inthe solution I propose, I must confess myenormous indebtedness to the work of KenWilber, Clare Graves, Don Beck, and Chris-topher Cowan. Different letter writers com-plained of a tendency within our communi-ty to preach inclusiveness while actuallyconsigning to the outer darkness those mis-guided souls with the temerity to advocateother viewpoints, such as libertarianism,conservatism, and Republicanism.

Wilber, Graves, et al. (whose thoughts Ishall now brutally condense and simplify)suggest that individuals and societies devel-op roughly similarly to biological organismsby differentiation of new capacities and

integration of both old and new, a tran-scend-and-include process. For humanbeings, this involves differentiation andintegration of worldviews and values, whichcan be color coded for convenience.

Skipping the beige level and starting atthe purple level, there is precious little dif-ferentiation, much magical thinking, and acertain proneness to human sacrifice andcannibalism. At the red level, the disadvan-tages of overdoing the herd mentality areseen, and heroic values of individualcourage and generosity emerge, along with acertain amount of outlawry. At the bluelevel, the disadvantages of outlawry areseen, and the emphasis is on order and tra-dition (which is where most adults in mostpresent-day societies operate). At theorange level, the disadvantages of excessivereliance on tradition are seen, and values ofindividualism, rationality, constitutionaldemocracy, free markets, and scientificenterprise emerge. At the green level, thedisadvantages of overreliance on scienceand individualism are seen, and values ofinclusivity, multiculturalism, pluralism, egal-itarianism, environmentalism, and sensitiv-ity become prominent, often (unfortunate-ly) accompanied by a rejection of scienceand individualism,Western civilization, and

so on.On close inspection, one may note that

each color has something to offer as well assome shortcomings. Even purple has some-thing to offer: magical thinking, which (ifunderstood properly) can be both instruc-tive and a joy (if you don't believe me, meetsome small children). Green, whose positivevalues may be self-evident to many atSwarthmore, has the distinct disadvantageof tending to reject Western civilization,which, despite its many ghastly failings, hasgiven us the concepts of human rights, civilliberties, and several other blessings thathelp minimize the number of green peopleburned at the stake or tossed in jail in theU.S. and other constitutional democracies.A shared problem all of these colors have isthat they cannot appreciate their own limi-tations very well, nor can they appreciatethe values of the other colors. They tendinstead to get locked into battles for domi-nance.

There is hope, though, the solution ofwhich I wrote: At a second tier of colors(yellow and turquoise), people can see howhuman values and worldviews are integrat-ed and have particular strengths and limita-tions. The tendency to dismiss contemptu-ously the worldviews of others as worthless,subhuman, or demonic evaporates in favorof an ability to see a far more inclusivevision that can honor and use creatively thecontributions of all levels (while accountingwisely for the dangers inhering in the differ-ent levels). Second-tier thinking vastlyimproves the capacity to distinguish babyfrom bathwater. And we, my friends, canengage in it! Just think what a radical reduc-tion inmutual contemptmight mean to us all!

In closing, I cannot resist a plug for atechnique that appears to enhance second-tier capacities enormously: meditation. Inone study, the practice of meditationappeared to boost the proportion of second-tier thinkers from 1 percent at pretest to 38percent at post-test, a rather astonishingresult.

Peace, love, and bagels at midnight,DAVID KERRIGAN '79Falls Church, Va.

WE WELCOME YOUR LETTERSAddress letters to Editor, SwarthmoreCollege Bulletin, 500 College Avenue,Swarthmore PA 19081; or e-mail them to

WHAT’S THAT NUMBERABOVE MY ADDRESS?

The 7- or 9-digit number at the upperright corner of your Swarthmore mailinglabel is your unique identification withinSwarthmore’s database. It is not yourSocial Security number. It is used

• to help College staff search the data-base more accurately and quickly toupdate your information or processyour gift to Swarthmore• to allow you to access some of theCollege’s on-line services, such as theSwarthmore On-Line Community

For more information on these services,go to www.swarthmore.edu/alumni/-olc.html.

#0000000ALUMNI, PARENT, OR FRIEND NAMESTREET ADDRESSCITY, STATE, ZIP(COUNTRY)

InApril, Swarthmore alumni will participate in an annual dem-ocratic ritual—the election of new members to the AlumniCouncil. Fourteen alumni chosen from seven geographic

regions will join more than 50 other members in an organizationthat is often poorly understood.

What exactly is the Swarthmore College Alumni Council? Quitesimply, it is the governing body of the Alumni Association, ofwhich all graduates and former students are members. The councilwas created in 1937 during a reorganization of the association,which itself dates to 1882. Since its creation, the council has under-taken numerous projects and performed many different functions,often struggling to define its role at the College but still finding rel-evance today.

The council had its origins in the desire to bring alumni and theCollege closer together. In the 1930s, Swarthmore’s relations withits alumni were strained by changes at the College under PresidentFrank Aydelotte (see page 20). The institution of the Honors Pro-gram and Aydelotte’s determination to bring the intercollegiateAthletics Program under the control of the College caused manyalumni to question the direction of their alma mater. Efforts weremade on both sides to close the gap.

For its part, the Alumni Association, under President WilliamTomlinson ’17, began publication of The Garnet Letter, the precursorto this magazine, in 1935. During the next two years, a Joint Com-mittee on College-Alumni Relations worked out a plan to reorgan-ize the association with an elected Alumni Council as its centralgoverning body. One of its first initiatives was to urge the Collegeto hire a professional alumni secretary. Carl Dellmuth ’31 beganthis work in 1938, and his office was the foundation of Swarth-more’s current alumni relations, public relations, and developmentprograms.

Another initiative was to obtain alumni representation on theBoard, which then—unlike today’s Board—had many nonalumni(largely leaders of the Society of Friends) among its members. TheBoard agreed, and the council recommended Thomas McCabe ’15,who became the first Alumni Manager—and later the first non-Quaker to be its chairman.

In an examination of the role of the association in 1948, Presi-dent John Nason described it as follows:

It is assumed that an Alumni Association exists to serve twopurposes. The first is to promote and facilitate those gather-ings of alumni, which bring together old friends, renew oldacquaintances, and revive the sentiments of loyalty and affec-

tion which all graduates and former students of the collegeshare in common…. The second purpose is to serve the col-lege in whatever ways are possible. By financial support, bythe contribution of suggestions and advice, by the recruit-ment of students, by public expression of enthusiasm, and bythe quality of their individual lives and services, alumni con-tribute to the strength and progress of their alma mater.

Nason saw the functional role of the council as advisory on thedetermination of policy, collaborative in the support of studentsand alumni in their careers and in the recruitment of new studentsfor the College, and fiduciary in the alumni’s “special interest notonly in the maintenance of private higher education but of Swarth-more College in particular.”

According to Rich Truitt ’66, current president of the AlumniAssociation, today’s council is not too far off that mark. Councilremains both an advisory and a service organization—and,although responsibility for fund-raising now lies with the adminis-tration, class agents, and the Board of Managers, it sponsors andpromotes the Alumni Council Scholarship, established in 2000.

The current structure of the council was developed in the 1990sunder the leadership of presidents Alan Symonette ’76, Jack

Riggs ’64, and Elenor Reid ’67. Riggs says that “different peoplecome on the council with different expectations, and althoughsome members saw themselves as ‘ambassadors,’ others wanted toplay a more active role in the affairs of the College.”

The council is currently organized in three “working groups”—alumni support, student support, and College advisory and sup-port. As their names imply, each working group has taken on a setof projects that focuses on the needs of the constituent. The alumnigroup supportscommunications,alumni career serv-ices, awards, andConnectionsorganizations in 13cities. The studentsupport groupconcentrates onconnecting stu-dents with alumni,career networking,and the highly suc-cessful Externship Program. The College advisory group assists theAdmissions and Development offices in finding alumni volunteersand has provided input and alumni representatives for several cam-pus committees. (Detailed descriptions of these and other initia-tives may be found at the council Web site http://www.swarth-more.edu/alumni/alumni_council.html.)

Since the Board of Managers’ December 2000 decision to elim-inate football and wrestling from the Athletics Program, membersof the council have made a concerted effort to involve alumni moreclosely as a sounding board in the decision-making processes ofthe College. This is “complicated,” says Riggs, who now serves as aTerm Manager. “Because of the depth of Board members’ involve-

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“If we didn’thave an AlumniCouncil, we’d haveto invent one.”

C o m eT o g e t h e rS W A R T H M O R E ’ S A L U M N I C O U N C I LO F F E R S S E R V I C E A N D A D V I C E .

By Jeff rey Lott

ment—and the fact that currently all Managers are alumni—it’seasy for them to understand the rationale for certain decisions. Butthe Alumni Council can and does provide an important perspectiveon how others might see the Board’s actions.”

In fall 2001, the council arranged for meetings between mem-bers of the Board and administration and representatives of Mindthe Light, an alumni and parents group critical of both the outcomeand process of the athletics decision. One result of those meetingswas an ad hoc committee to study the history and uses of consen-sus decision making at the College. That committee reported to theBoard of Managers at its meeting in February (see “Update,” p. 41).

Governance issues and the role of alumni in affecting Collegepolicy will continue to be debated. “The controversy over athleticsgave the council greater visibility and there for more opportunity tobe of service to the alumni and the College,” says Truitt.

Alan Symonette, a professional arbitrator and the first AfricanAmerican to head the Alumni Association (the first woman, the lateRuth Wilcox Mahler ’49 was elected in 1975), sees the council as“more active these days, more involved as a resource for the admin-istration and the Board.” He points out that Alumni Managers nowmeet regularly with the executive committee of the council and thatthe nominating committees of both the council and Board have“refined the process” of selecting Alumni Managers, giving astronger voice to the council. President Alfred H. Bloom has met

regularly with the executive com-mittee of the council and members,and the executive committee of theBoard of Managers has also begunto meet annually with council mem-bers to exchange ideas.Some would like to go much fur-

ther in involving alumni in the gov-ernance of the College. MarshallSchmidt ’47, president of the Alum-ni Association from 1971 to 1973and now a member of Mind theLight, acknowledges that the Boardof Managers has “always been self-selected” but thinks that “alumniparticipation in the Board shouldbe free and open. I would like to seeat least one third of the Board elect-ed directly by alumni.”The Alumni Council is active in

proposing names for Board nomi-nation. There are currently eightpersons designated as AlumniManagers serving four-year termson the Board—about a quarter ofits members. In addition, there are

three Young Alumni Managers who have graduated within the past10 years, selected by the Board’s Nominating Committee. The presi-dent of the Alumni Association also serves as an ex-officio memberof the Board, and many former association presidents have gone onto become Term Managers.

The council is most visible to students and alumni through itsservice functions. Its successful Externship Program, initiated

in the early 1970s and revived in the 1990s, placed 150 students inexternships during this year’s winter break. The program is sup-ported by the Alumni Relations and Career Services offices at theCollege. But recruitment of sponsors, hosts, and placement of stu-dents is handled by an active group of volunteers headed by Cyn-thia Norris Graae ’62 and Nanine Meiklejohn ’68. Another recentinitiative was to contact alumni and parents living abroad, askingthem to provide support for the increasing number of Swarthmorestudents who study outside the United States each semester.

The council has also sponsored career-networking dinners,bringing alumni in various fields to campus and introducing themto students interested in those professions. In 2002, more than 80students attended these dinners.

Elenor Reid thinks that this relationship between the counciland the College is “a wonderful model for the undergraduates—tosee all these alumni who come back to campus and want to be ofservice.”

Former Associate Vice President for Alumni Relations MaralynOrbison Gillespie ’49, who observed and shepherded the AlumniCouncil for more than 30 years, sums up: “If we didn’t have anAlumni Council, we’d have to invent one. It’s a sounding board,especially in times of controversy or crisis.”T

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT RICH TRUITT PRESIDES AT THE 2002

ALUMNI COLLECTION. ONE IMPORTANT ACTIVITY OF THE ALUMNI COUNCIL IS

TO SPONSOR TWO AWARDS EACH YEAR—THE SHANE AWARD FOR ALUMNI

SERVICE TO THE COLLEGE AND THE ARABELLA CARTER AWARD FOR ALUMNI

SERVICE IN THEIR HOME COMMUNITIES.

MARCH

2003

STEVEN

GOLDBLATT!67

It’s a warm, sunny day on Parrish Beach.A gentle breeze is blowing across the campus,which is never more beautiful than in spring.The Adirondack chairs beckon. You are deep inconversation with an old friend.

What could be better?

P i c t u r eY o u r s e l f

H e r e

PAINTING

BYBARBARASEYM

OUR!63

A l u m n iW e e k e n d

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